By MARK GRANT
NFIB Illinois state director
Let’s say I decide that I don’t feel like renewing my Illinois driver’s license when it expires. If I continue to drive, I would be breaking the law.
So, now we have Senate President John Cullerton, a revered and well-respected lawmaker, telling anyone who will listen that the Senate doesn’t need to follow the law or Illinois’ constitution. He’s telling anyone who will listen that a decades-old state law requiring the legislature to provide a revenue estimate before proposing a state budget doesn’t apply to the current General Assembly.
The requirement is merely a suggestion, he says. Lawmakers don’t really need to know about how much money the state has in the bank before deciding how to spend it.
This, of course, is bunk.
I can’t decide that the law saying I need a license before I can drive doesn’t apply to me any more than Cullerton can declare the requirement that legislators come up with a revenue estimate doesn’t apply to them.
Whether you are a worker, a small-business owner, a corporate executive, or a student, you must follow the laws of the land because that is what orderly and well-run societies do.
Oh, but wait, this is Illinois. The Land of Lincoln has become the Land of Dysfunction. And now it’s crystal clear why the General Assembly has so much trouble getting things done:
Too many elected officials seem to think the laws don’t apply to them and that it’s in their political interest to avoid tough decisions. This has led our state to such utter failure that we would file for bankruptcy if we could.
Illinois’ small-business owners operate in one of the most expensive tax and regulatory climates in the United States. They don’t have the luxury of ignoring laws they don’t like or avoiding tough financial decisions without facing legal consequences.
Why won’t the leaders of the majority parties in the House and Senate do a revenue estimate? Are they afraid of what it will show?
Only Cullerton and other majority leaders know their game plan, but my guess is they want to stall or forego real budget negotiations and just hand the governor and the minority leaders a take-it-or-leave-budget in the final hours of the legislative session.
That’s no way to run a state.
The decades of mismanagement and two-year budget impasse has left Illinois billions in the red. Democrats and Republicans disagree on the size of our budget deficit, but there’s no arguing over the fact that Illinois is deeply, deeply in the hole, and things are only getting worse.
The bottom line is: I need a driver’s license, you must pay your taxes, and Cullerton needs to come up with a revenue estimate before he can propose how to spend taxpayers’ money.
We shouldn’t have to, but we must remind our elected officials that no one is above the law. It’s time to set partisan politics aside and get Illinois back on track.
