From Wirepoints:
Illinois’ New Budget: Hypocrisy and Deceit Are Now Grotesque in the General Assembly
By: Mark Glennon*
Sometimes you can only wonder how distant the planet is on which our most of our lawmakers live. How can they say things so preposterous?
Last Thursday, two days before the end of their session, with no budget yet presented and other critical legislation still pending, the Democratic House supermajority took time out for something else: Discussing and passing a resolution condemning a federal budget measure the resolution says was “slammed through” by U.S. House Republicans.
But over the following days the Democratic supermajority did just that for Illinois, slamming through over 3,000 pages of budget bills less than 30 hours after they had been published.
The substance of the budget was stuck into empty shell bills in the final hours, thereby undermining Illinois’ constitutional “Three Readings” rule that sets time minimums for members to review bills’ contents.
The secret, backdoor process is routine for the Democratic supermajority, with every recent budget being passed within hours of the contents becoming known.
“Anyone who says they knew exactly what they were voting for is not telling you the truth,” Civic Federation President Joe Ferguson said this year about the budget process. It’s as simple as that. The process is farcical.
For those very reasons, a group of Republican lawmakers filed a lawsuit Thursday seeking to enjoin implementation of the budget bills because it was passed unconstitutionally. Illinois’ political courts, in the past, have turned a blind eye to the Three Readings Rule, but the plaintiffs are hoping for better results this time.
Compared to Illinois’s process, the federal budget process now underway, faulty as it may be, is a model in transparency and deliberation.
The U.S. House passed their budget resolution nearly two months ago and its contents have been in plain view since then. That followed the Senate’s passage of its own version on April 5, 2025. An extended reconciliation process is now underway that likely won’t be resolved until July or August.
All the while, the federal budget is being openly debated, reported in headlines everywhere and even being scored for fiscal impact by budget watchdogs.
That debate is sometimes hot, even among Congressional Republicans, in contrast to what we saw with Illinois Democrats who vote in unison with what their leadership hands them. That’s particularly true of Medicaid funding, which is the primary focus of the Illinois Democrats’ resolution. Many Republicans are adamant that no Medicaid cuts should be made. Missouri’s Republican Senator Josh Hawley, for example, said Medicaid cuts would be “immoral.” Other Republicans are equally adamant about federal deficits and want more cuts. Wisconsin’s GOP Senator Ron Johnson also used the word “immoral” to describe spending excess in the House measure.
That’s how it should work. Open debate over a multi-month process with the out-of-power party and independent analysts commenting along the way. Not in Illinois.
The Illinois resolution’s lead sponsor, Rep. Nicolle Grasse (D-Arlington Heights) also repeated in the House the usual, gross distortion about “$880 billion of slashes to Medicaid” in the U.S. House budget bill.
That’s extremely misleading at best. The House bill merely caps growth in Medicaid spending to 2% per year for ten years, and applying that cap would simply take $880 billion off ten-year projections.
Healthcare costs are growing at more than 2% per year and demographic projections show more Medicaid claimants coming, so it’s true that some genuine cuts might result, but it certainly doesn’t mean that $880 billion will be “cut” or “slashed” from Medicaid. Republicans think any genuine cuts can be avoided by adding work requirements, reducing fraud and taking illegal immigrants out of the system. Democrats say that won’t work and that Republicans plan other hurdles to Medicaid eligibility. Perhaps, but claims about $880 billion in cuts are obviously dishonest. Even with the House’s proposed cap, federal spending on Medicaid would be 33% higher next year, after adjusting for inflation, than it was in 2019.
Illinois Republican lawmakers angrily denounced the hypocrisy in the Illinois resolution. You can see that here in video provided by Center Square. But that’s about the only media coverage on the matter you will find. That’s part of the answer to how Illinois lawmakers can say things as preposterous as they do. They live on the same distant planet as most of the public in which there’s no accountability for their words and deeds.
