Illinois - no final budget

If citizens, anywhere, everywhere, ever wake up and start paying attention to government, they will be outraged. Maybe that's what politicians know - and are afraid of - and hope never happens.

Illinois pols failed to finalize a budget in the last session. What does this mean? Another huge deficit budget.

I tried to get the correct House Bill number for Sunday's vote on the budget from Jack Franks' office yet. An aide in the Woodstock office gave me the wrong number, saying in her message that she "hoped" she was giving me the right number. She must not have looked very carefully, because it took only a few clicks to find the bill at www.ilga.gov and recognize that it was not the budget bill.

Then the morning's Northwest Herald reports that all elected State reps from McHenry County voted against an income tax hike (without informing readers of the Bill Number). All I can say is, "Shame on all five of you."

Go to (for example) Jack Franks' webpage for all the bills he has sponsored in this session: http://ilga.gov/house/RepBills.asp?MemberID=1373 Now, I'm not picking on Jack necessarily, because it's probably the same for every Representative and Senator in Illinois. Look at the absolutely insane number of bills of which he is a sponsor.

Is this a case of "Throw enough mud against a wall and some of it will stick"? Maybe what we need in this state is for the politicians to begin working on the budget on the first day of the session and not work on anything else until they approve a budget! Or limit a rep to sponsoring only 5-10 bills!

When you sponsor so many bills, how can you possibly know enough information about many of them to make informed decisions?

A great question is, "Is this the most important use of my time right now?"

Is there anything more important than a balanced budget? Well, how about a budget that results in a surplus?

For too many years, the pols voted to spend more than they took in. Now it's time to pay the piper.

If not now, when???

A wise reader commented recently on www.nwherald.com that elections are only months away, and so no politician is going to vote for a tax increase. Is that what's going on now?