East Central Reporter

Veteran Illinois state Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet) still seethes about the Democrats' new $42 billion state budget.

“This is what 3,000 pages look like,” Rose said during a recent House floor debate. “The final version was filed about 5 minutes before the House began voting on it. There is over a billion dollars in Democratic pork projects, $666 million in new taxes.”

Rose said the budget includes a pay raise for lawmakers, and a measure that would erase that seems to be going nowhere fast.

“House Bill 500 hasn’t left the chamber,” he said. “That’s to block the pay raise and the House is already adjourned.”

Rose isn’t the only Republican lawmaker voicing outrage.

“With the majority party, what we see is a continuous desire to operate through an expeditious process in the dark of night without any transparency that results in things like this, chaos,” said state Sen. Jason Barickman (R-Bloomington). “While countless people were sleeping in the state, you rushed through a $41 billion budget so fatally flawed that you had to use a procedural mechanism that even Speaker Madigan wouldn’t use to rescue it”

Barickman agrees the lawmaker pay raises strike him as a travesty and as an affront to taxpayers.

“The governor could have used an amendatory veto and struck those pay raises out,” he said.” He could have stood up for Illinoisans and said 'you know what I’m for the people.'”