Gov. Pat Quinn's Budget address will begin at approximately noon today. Listen live on Newstalk 1340 WSOY or click here at noon to listen online at wsoyam.com
Gov. Pat Quinn may be daring state lawmakers to initiate an income tax hike.
Quinn’s budget, to be presented at noon today (Wednesday), does not include money from a tax increase, and therefore, according to his staff, includes:
- $2 billion in cuts (education, human services, health care, state government employees)
- $4.7 billion in borrowing (some of which could be mid-term debt)
- $6 billion that would have to wait until Fiscal Year 2012 to be paid
When asked repeatedly if Quinn would offer a tax hike as an alternative to this “doomsday budget,” budget director David Vaught and chief of staff Jerry Stermer would only say that we’d find out during the speech. But they insist that the numbers presented in the budget briefing would not change.
Specifically, cuts in this proposal include:
- $1.3 billion from education
- $203 million from state government employees
- $325 million from health care
- $276 million from human services
- $300 million from local government (by reducing the local government share of income taxes from 10 percent to 3 percent.)
Stermer and Vaught says lawmakers failed to raise taxes last year to help deal with a multi-billion dollar deficit, and have already indicated that the chance for passage this year is slim. Details in the budget briefing were unusually sparse.
