East Central Reporter

Darren Bailey is telling voters “I told you so” regarding Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s’ 2024 budget. 

Pritzker, the politician Bailey – a former state senator – unsuccessfully tried to unseat in fall 2022, delivered a budget last week that critics are saying is big on talk but doesn’t deliver results to pull the state out of its spot as last in the nation.

“We are embarking on a $49.6 billion budget. People are leaving Illinois,” Bailey said on Facebook. “The economy is slowing and dragging. People are exiting Chicago like crazy at 30 percent and probably more by now, 30 percent vacant retail space in Chicago. A lot of people in small town USA are living their dreams, trying to revive, trying to open up small business, but go and talk to a lot of these people and ask them how things are going. They're struggling. And J.B. Pritzker has continued to use federal money and COVID dollars to ramp up spending, all the while not even talking about real solutions to the real problems we have here in Illinois. Crime.”

Bailey said Pritzker is not paying attention to the state’s debts.

“You should be appalled at this that they're not addressing, taking care of, and meeting the requirements of what needs to be done to get your future stable. Teachers, parents. He's tossing more money at education, all while Illinois spends almost already more than any other state in the union. And our scores are the worst of anywhere we're failing,” he said.

Every year, Pritzker gets criticized for his unbalanced budget.  But he has not only been critiqued about the state's spending priorities, deficits, and high taxes but as well as how he runs Illinois.  

“But here's what happens when you have a rich, spoiled brat as [a] governor whose answer to everything has always just been simple money. Money buys happiness, right? Well, it sure does for J.B. Pritzker. So, you throw more money at the problems because that's all this man knows. Well, everybody, if you're on the receiving end of it, sure, you're going to sit there and you're going to want that. You're going to take that. Politicians, when they come into your communities and say, what do you want? You know, and you give them all these lists of what you want, friends that's costing us our future. If we continue to do that and we don't take care of our priorities and get our spending under control.” 

Bailey told The Center Square he warned voters. “When I was a candidate, I warned people this would happen and talked about us having to live within our means or face destroying the state,” Bailey told The Center Square. “What the governor is pushing is a bridge to higher taxes for everyone in this state,” he added. “He’s using COVID and federal money to advance his own agenda. There will come a day when these bills are due and the only way to pay will be to raise taxes on everyone or drastically cut services.”

Wirepoints said Pritzker’s budget is largely based on an unprecedented $200 billion in one-time funds from federal Covid relief and does not tell the entire story when it comes to the state’s fiscal woes. “All of their celebrations ignore a simple fact. Illinois lawmakers had almost nothing to do with creating the state’s record budget. Revenues are up, deficits are papered over and Illinois’ credit ratings are improved for one reason: the Fed’s unprecedented $200 billion stimulus. The reality is, even after the federal bailout, Illinois remains at the bottom of the barrel nationally,” Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner wrote. Illinois has the lowest credit rating in the nation with Chicago and Chicago Public Schools in worse fiscal condition than the state. Wirepoints said Pritzker lied when he said the state is “strongest financial position in decades.” “The state’s credit rating was just two notches below a AAA rating in 2009. Since then, Illinois has been in a credit-rating freefall, dropping eight notches under Gov. Pat Quinn, another 13 under Gov. Bruce Rauner and one under Pritzker. In April 2020, Illinois was just one notch from a junk rating,” Dabrowski and Klingner wrote. “The three upgrades under Gov. Pritzker barely change anything. Illinois needs around 20 more upgrades to really get back to the ‘strongest financial position in decades.’”

Pritzker has increased that state’s budget for 2024 by 11 percent over last year, Chalkbeat Chicago reported. The $49.6 billion he is proposing includes increased payments to schools. The budget is yet to be debated. But given Democrat super-majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly many are expecting no forceful pushback from legislators.

Other areas of expenditure include the state’s troubled Department of Children and Family Services. “Failed GOP gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey said the governor needed to fire DCFS Director Marc Smith, who retained his position in Pritzker's second term. Smith has been held in contempt of court 12 times for failing to place children in proper care within the proper timeframe,” The State Journal-Register wrote. Prtizker’s budget also includes funds to increase the coffers of Medicaid and to expand the accessibility of broadband internet.