State
Representative John Cavaletto (R-Salem) believes the Governor’s
budget proposal is "chaotic and unreasonable."
“The Governor wants to cut education funding of all things while at the same time keeping all other spending flat and expanding Medicaid, which already costs our state extreme amounts of money annually,” Rep. Cavaletto said. “Between today’s speech and his continued efforts to close Murray Center, I’ve given up trying to understand how this Governor’s mind works.”
Cavaletto said he’s especially frustrated with the proposed Medicaid expansion because the Governor has yet to implement all of the Medicaid reforms passed by the General Assembly last year.
“The General Assembly passed Medicaid reforms that would save Illinois significant amounts of money and the Governor has yet to put all of those reforms into place despite our continued urging him to do so. And now, instead of doing what we’ve asked and saving our state money, he’s decided to go the other way and expand Medicaid, costing us even more money we don’t have,” said Cavaletto.
The budget proposed by the Governor totals $35.6 billion, which is $1.9 billion more than last year’s budget. Cavaletto said today’s proposed budget plan emphasized how little control and understanding the Governor has over the state’s financial crisis.
“The bottom line is the Governor laid out an unreasonable and chaotic budget plan that showed how out of touch he really is. The state is broke and rather than face that problem head on, he chose to propose cuts in areas where we shouldn’t cut and expand areas we can’t afford to expand,” Rep. Cavaletto said.
