Budget realities collide with politics for candidates on the campaign trail

Like an overdue credit-card bill, the balance has grown overwhelming.

Last summer, Illinois legislators grappled with a $9 billion deficit, struggled to cut enough spending and declined to raise taxes. So they borrowed cash to cover the state’s obligations.

Now, as the debt climbs and Illinois’ political races enter the general election, the question is: How will any candidate, Republican or Democrat, get beyond deep financial problems and political acrimony?

“I have never seen our state in this position, with everything pointing to zero,” says Democrat Donne Trotter, majority appropriations chair in the Illinois Senate. “The only number that’s rising is the deficit.”

Candidates from both major parties agree that the state cannot continue its current path, but they differ on the new road to prosperity.

Republicans contend that they could cut spending and hold the line on taxes, or even lower them. Democrats, despite recent associations with waste and corruption, propose that the solution is more taxes, not less.

Either way, political analysts warn that if something isn’t done soon, the result could be crippling to Illinois’ future.

“What we can’t keep doing is what we’re doing now,” says Mark J. Heyrman, a law professor at the University of Chicago and expert on the Illinois Legislature. “This is like someone who’s jumped off a hundred-story building, and when they get to the 50th story, they say, ‘I’m fine so far.’”

In December, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Illinois’ bonds, citing “large structural budget deficits, growing negative year-end fund balances, strained operating fund liquidity and mounting pressure from pension and retiree health benefit obligations.”

Both Gov. Pat Quinn and Comptroller Dan Hynes have advocated some form of income-tax hike to raise state revenue. Yet spokespeople for their campaigns said they were unable to make their candidates available for interviews about the state’s budget.

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