Illinois budget battles
After a ceremony to have cake and a plaque commemorating the longest overtime budget session in state history (I gotta give the Republicans in the General Assembly credit, that move is pretty funny!), our fair state finally has a budget. Well, there’s that whole matter of final votes on the floor, but whatever. No income tax increases and capped property taxes. More money for schools and low-income health care (they say). Yay. And from the sounds of it, at least according to WMAQ-TV, the whole cause of the mess was funding for schools and child healthcare. Of course, it’s always about the children, isn’t it?
After hearing sound bites from Senate president Emil Jones and House Minority Leader Tom Cross exchanging cross-aisle congratulations to themselves and the governor for getting money for the children, Blagojevich (look, the governor actually in Springfield!) in a TV interview decides to inject a jab at House Speaker Mike Madigan for (allegedly) wanting to reduce education funding (horrors!) and raise taxes (double horrors!). An unnecessary and irrelevant jab, I might add. Rod, Rod, Rod…don’t do that. Tweaking the #2 Democrat in the state isn’t a good idea, especially when your office isn’t on the 5th floor of Chicago City Hall.
<font style=”font-size: 70%;”>Note: corrected on 21 July. Thanks to Eric for pointing out a factual error in my original post. </font>