The democrat led Illinois House voted 70-43 to approve the spending bill of $3.7 and 61-52 on a companion measure that would cancel a requirement that the state repay $454 million borrowed from special funds to plug holes in last year’s budget. The bill would allow for funding of higher education and other services in Illinois. House Republicans argue that the measures will just add to the state’s ballooning backlog of unpaid bills.
Following the vote on these two bills, House Republicans made a motion for a vote to return to work on Friday in an attempt to negotiate on the state budget, but Democrat leadership ruled the motion out of order. House Speaker Michael Madigan instead moved to adjourn until April 4th, a full month from today.
State Representative David Reis, who represents the local 109th district, called in another outrageous move by Speaker Madigan.
“We witnessed today another outrageous move by the democrats to not compromise, to not come to the table and put a final budget together,” said Reis.
“We’ve heard for several months the folks that are not getting their funding this year, like human services, county health departments, our universities, and school construction grants. They cozied all that stuff up into a $3 billion bill that they had no way to pay for. What was really outrageous was that at the end of the day we made the recommendation that we stay here and continue to week instead of going home for the next four weeks. Our motion was declared out of order. We couldn’t do anything. This is what the democrats have done all year, unbalanced budgets, no compromise, no final resolution to our budget impasse. I think the people back home wanted us to stay here, and we wanted to do that.”