Sen. Jason Barickman | Facebook
Sen. Jason Barickman | Facebook
State Sen. Jason Barickman (R-Bloomington) is blasting the state’s newly passed $42 billion state budget for its creation's lack of transparency and its pay raises for lawmakers.
“With the majority party, what we see is a continuous desire to operate through an expeditious process in the dark of the night without any transparency that results in things like this chaos,” Barickman said during Senate floor debate. “While helpless people were sleeping in the state, you rushed through a $42 billion budget so fatally flawed that you had to use a procedural mechanicism that even Speaker Madigan wouldn’t use to rescue it.”
“The governor could have used his amendatory veto and struck those pay raises right out,” he said. “He could have stood up for Illinoisans and said 'you know what, I’m for you the people.'”
Barickman isn’t the only GOP lawmaker screaming foul.
“To the bill, ladies and gentlemen, this is what 3,000 pages looks like,” state Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Decatur) said of the new budget. “It was filed five minutes before the House began voting on it. We asked time and again for a full rack-up and never got that. We asked to have meetings where we could walk down each agency’s budget. We were called to a few meetings but I would say the only one that had a walkdown was ISBE.”
Rose said he doesn’t see how legislation like Senate Bill 2800 can answer any budget questions when so many mysteries about the numbers persist.
“The last walkdown we had was supposed to start at 10 a.m. It instead started at 9 a.m. and no one invited us,” he said.
Rose is among the Republican lawmakers now estimating that the governor’s $42.3 billion spending plan comes with more than $1 billion in pork project for Democrats.
“Our side represents four million people in this state. A 3,000-page bill and four million aren’t included in this bill,” he said. “You got your new districts and now you’ve got your billion dollars for your new districts. $666 million in new taxes. This budget is an unparalleled spending spree of epic proportions.”
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