Illinois House Dems quietly deep-six ‘pay as you go’ bill

By Kevin McDermott

Post-Dispatch Springfield Bureau

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Illinois House Republicans are putting the public relations thumbscrews to the ruling Democrats right now in the only way they can: By proposing a bill that seeks to impose what one sponsor called “fiscal sanity” on state spending, then forcing the Dems to publicly slap it down.

The bill, HB3189, would require that any legislation that’s passed and is going to cost money has to have an identified income source included in it. How could anyone be opposed to that, you ask? That’s the same thing the Republicans are asking, in one angry floor speech after another.

“When you’re in a $12 billion hole, quit digging!” shouted state Rep. Bill Black, R-Danville, summing up the philosophy behind the bill. Another Republican backer of the bill pointed out that this “pay as you go” process is one that, on the federal level, is being demanded by President Barack Obama. (Using Obama’s positions as a lever on Democrats here has become a favorite tactic of Illinois Republicans — ironic, considering.)

As is so often the case these days, this seemingly common-sense idea isn’t as simple as it sounds. Illinois does indeed have a $12 billion budget deficit — which, some would tell you, means the last thing you want to do is cut off your own options in terms of how you allocate what money you do have. Flexibility in spending decisions is, arguably, more important than ever at times like this.

In any case, the point of proposing the bill wasn’t to get it passed, but to force its defeat. The bill (just now voted down, along partisan lines, since I started writing this blog) died without a word of debate from the Dems — just as the Republicans knew from the start that it would. Whatever the Democrats’ fiscal reasoning behind that action, it just plain looks bad. Expect to see more of these kinds of political smoke-bombs as the November election approaches.