North Cook News

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Democratic leaders recently announced that they reached an agreement on a $50 billion state budget on May 24. However, lawmakers quickly adjourned before bringing the measure to the Senate floor for a vote.

“The Senate and the House have agreed to give us the tools to manage the program properly,” Pritzker said, adding that it “allows us to provide health care for the people who are on the program now and make sure that we’re continuing the program going forward, but in a budget-friendly way so that everybody gets the health care that they need.”

Illinois Republicans championed opinions against Pritzker’s signing of the 2023 Fiscal Budget. Within the budget, the state will give $350 million to K-12 public schools.

Soon after lawmakers ended a session that ensured talks would have to extend into at least the weekend, a spokesman for Democratic Senate President Don Harmon of Oak Park said the legislation was “being reviewed by all parties to ensure it reflects the agreement we have.”

The Chicago Tribune also reported the budget added a $1 billion deposit into the state’s rainy day fund.

The law allows legislators to extend until as late as May 31 to get a final budget approved with a simple majority; after that, it would require a three-fifths vote in favor in both the House and Senate, with experts quickly adding Democratic supermajorities in both chambers are strong enough to easily meet the raised standard.

“We’ve achieved our state’s strongest fiscal position in generations, and we prioritized the education, public safety, health, and welfare of the residents of Illinois,” Pritzker said to Chalkbeat Chicago.

More recently, Pritzker has added $1.1 billion to the estimated costs of his Medicaid-style program for immigrants as more and more of them have flooded into the city, with those rising costs putting greater pressure on the state budget.

The 45th United States President passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that gave tax cuts for individual tax rates and for the highest-income earners. The Balance Money noted that the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation explained the act would add $1 to $2 trillion to the deficit.

As it is, the program now covers immigrants 42 and older who are in the country without legal permission or who have green cards but haven’t completed the five-year waiting period that makes them eligible for traditional insurance programs in place to aid the indigent.