Seal of Disapproval

With all due credit being given to Eric Zorn for pointing me to the resources, I have decided upon my semi-official logo for the (unfortunately) foreseeable future.

Without getting into the various circus sideshows that have driven us into overtime, I am hard-pressed to believe that this exercise is going to wind up with a better outcome than the budget that we passed in the House.

Are there other items which I would have liked to see included in the budget? Of course there are. But as I stated in the press, I believe that this is the appropriate time to pass a budget that addresses needs before wishes.

Are there items in the budget that I don't think belong there? Yep. I'm not comfortable bailing out Stroger Hospital to the tune of $100 million dollars until Cook County gets its own house in order.

Yet the budget we passed relies on natural revenue growth and closure of certain corporate tax breaks in order to provide about a billion dollars in new expenditures. It does so without a sales or income tax increase and without relying on gaming as a crutch.

This overtime was avoidable.

The Governor attempted to lead by edict, with a plan that was doomed from the start no less. I can count on one hand, with fingers left over, the number of colleagues that feel that they have a positive working relationship with the man. It didn't have to be that way.

And style aside, he is attempting to foist an $8 billion dollar increase upon the Legislature, and the people of the State, to support programs that many experts feel are substantively unworkable.

Here is a math equation for future Governors to remember:

Bad funding plan + Unproven massive fiscal expenditure + alienated legislators + Complete unwillingness to compromise = Overtime

Of course we all want people to have access to quality healthcare. But there are other legitimate needs out there as well - education funding reform, mass transit funding, infrastructure improvements, etc. And the Governor's refusal to even scale back his proposal, while at the same time simply dismissing other priorities as unworthy may well mean that none of these needs get met.

Who wins in that scenario? Nobody that I can think of.

But there is always another need underpinning all of these issues. The need to pass a responsible budget. One that looks beyond election cycles and press releases. One that keeps in mind our duty of stewardship for this and future generations.

If it turns out that I am wrong, and that this overtime results in a budget that everybody is ultimately happier with, I will be the first to say so. But to go into overtime to wind up with an inferior outcome than what we could have had last week makes no sense to me.