Oberweis on state budget: Quinn's 'Rendezvous with Reality' not so much

The following is a press release issued by state Senate candidate Jim Oberweis:

“Despite Governor Quinn’s clever speechwriting, his new budget is less a ‘Rendezvous with Reality’ than it is a ‘Date with Deception,’ an ‘Appointment with Artifice,’ or an ‘Encounter with Evasion.’

“Three weeks ago, the Governor offered a State of the State Address that was so out of touch with reality it should have been delivered by a Kardashian. Today, he followed it up with a Budget Address in the same mold – because it’s a budget that calls for spending $550 million more than the already-adopted budget for FY 2012, a budget that makes clear his ‘temporary’ 67 percent tax hike won’t expire any time soon, a budget that – despite promises that the additional revenue generated by the ‘temporary’ tax hike would be used to pay off our multibillion-dollar backlog of late bills – calls for spending 99.5 percent of every dollar the state anticipates receiving from that tax hike in the next year on other priorities, leaving just $160 million to pay off our overdue bills.

“Despite his claims that his budget rolls back spending to FY 2008 levels, the fact is that this budget calls for spending $3.4 billion more than we spent in 2008.

“Despite pre-speech leaks intended to suggest that the Governor would offer tough Medicaid cuts, this budget anticipates adding another 160,000 people to the state’s Medicaid rolls. That would increase our Medicaid enrollment to a record 3 million people.

“What we should be doing instead is simple – roll back the 67 percent tax hike, and stop the spending.

“Any realistic assessment of our budget outlook must begin with the premise that the only way out of our current mess is to grow our way out – and the only way to grow our way out is to make Illinois attractive once again to investment. But investment comes, by definition, from investors – and they don’t want to, and will not want to, invest in Illinois as long as it remains a high-tax, high-regulation, high-spending, high-borrowing state.

“We can drive the change we need. It begins here, and it begins now.”