Ill. budget raises tough questions for governor candidates
SPRINGFIELD – The candidate was asked a simple, direct question: Specifically, where would you cut spending to make good on your promise to fix Illinois’ enormous budget problem without a tax increase?
“The answer,” he replied, “obviously is to cut spending and limit the growth in spending, which is outrageous.”
Jim Ryan was the candidate who came up with that nonanswer in a debate Tuesday, but it could have been almost any of the Republicans running for governor.
As Illinois faces the biggest budget disaster in its history, the seven men battling for the GOP nomination are making big promises but offering voters few details about what they would actually do if elected.
They fiercely reject the idea of tax increases and say cost-cutting is the key to balancing the budget. But when asked to spell out which government services they’re willing to cut, most of them retreat – as Ryan did in the debate – to generalities about making Medicaid more efficient or scouring the budget for waste.
They rarely dwell on the scope of the state’s problem: a deficit of about $11 billion.
That’s $11 billion out of $28 billion promised for general government services. That amounts to a 40 percent hole in the budget.
Even if the deficit is only half that size by the time the next governor takes office, or if officials disguise half of it by borrowing money and paying bills late, filling the hole still would require cutting $1 in every $5 the state now spends.
And that would require slashing some services and eliminating others completely.
“They’ve got themselves in a position, electionwise, where they can’t campaign on the truth,” said Steve Schnorf, who was budget director under Republican Govs. Jim Edgar and George Ryan.
Even some conservatives who oppose a tax increase scolded the candidates for glossing over the vast changes that would be required.
Steve Rauschenberger, a former state senator and a budget expert, said it would require, among other things, cutting school spending and switching to a voucher system, reducing the number of prison inmates by one-quarter, trimming higher education, and overhauling Medicaid from top to bottom.
“Any candidate who doesn’t talk frankly about major changes ... I don’t think is being realistic,” Rauschenberger said. “You can’t balance this budget simply by looking for easy efficiencies or slight reductions in head count.”
The Associated Press asked the candidates to name three specific programs they would end.
Sen. Bill Brady suggested streamlining the State Board of Education, an agency whose administrative budget amounts to $26.5 million. That’s about one-quarter of 1 percent of the deficit.
Bob Schillerstrom, the DuPage County Board chairman, called for ending a $13 million program letting legislators award college scholarships.
Businessman Andy McKenna said free mass-transit services should be offered only to poor senior citizens. That is not a state government program.
At times, the Democratic candidates aren’t any more specific than the Republicans. But Gov. Pat Quinn and challenger Dan Hynes both endorse different plans to raise income taxes, giving voters something to review as they decide whom to support.
And voters can judge Quinn’s performance in office, which includes budget cuts, attempts to lay off employees and other cost-cutting measures. Hynes has put together a budget plan that depends on some vague promises but also includes a long list of specific cuts.
Many experts reject the idea that Illinois’ budget problems can be fixed by cuts alone.
“I just don’t see any way we can reduce expenditures by those kinds of numbers. I don’t think it’s possible,” said Daniel McMillen of the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government and Public Affairs.
Even so, McMillen agreed with the Republican candidates that raising taxes now, amid a deep recession, could harm the state’s economy.
Schnorf, the former budget director, said Illinois must get spending under control, then raise taxes.
“I think it needs to end up being both,” he said.
Jim Ryan’s campaign declined an offer to talk in detail about his budget plans. But Sen. Kirk Dillard defended his no-tax-increase plan as both realistic and necessary, saying an increase would slow the state economy at the very time it needs help.
Noting his experience helping to balance the budget as chief of staff under Edgar, Dillard argued that the solution is to trim costs overall, overhaul Medicaid and government pensions, and encourage job growth that will produce new tax revenue.
“We cannot be all things to all people,” he said.
But when asked about any particular program – from universities to human services to agriculture research – Dillard said it should get more money.
Of all the Republican candidates, Dan Proft probably has been most blunt about changes he would pursue. The Chicago-area public relations consultant proposes cutting state taxes as part of a plan “to completely rethink and reorder” government services.
All the candidates promise to cut pensions and Medicaid, two of the biggest and fastest-growing parts of the budget. Cutting them wouldn’t be easy and wouldn’t erase the deficit, at least not by themselves.
The billions that Illinois spends on pensions each year pays the amount already promised to employees; cutting benefits now would keep that debt from growing but wouldn’t erase what already is owed. Moreover, Quinn and his predecessor, Rod Blagojevich, both tried and failed to change benefits to slow the growth of the state’s obligations.
Medicaid, the program to provide health care to the state’s poor, is huge and complex. Major changes would involve intense jockeying among lawmakers looking to cut, lawmakers interested in protecting Medicaid clients, and the hospitals and nursing homes that get the money.
