Written by Senate Democratic Caucus Staff Tuesday, 03 May 2011 09:50
Starting today, the Senate intends to take up a series of budget cutting amendments in committee and for final floor action this week in an effort to cut more than $1 billion from the governor’s proposed spending plan in order to bring about a balanced budget.
The Senate’s plan is to return to the open budgeting process of committee and Senate Floor votes on specific program cuts and agency budgets.
The process began back in early March when the bipartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability issued its revenue projections for the coming budget year. That agency is the official economic arm of the Illinois General Assembly and is charged with producing nonpartisan economic data.
The Senate voted 31-22 on March 17 to approve the revenue estimate. It was approved on the strength of Democratic votes.
On April 15, the Illinois Senate gave final approval to several pieces of legislation containing the full pension contributions for the state pension systems. These budgets cover nearly one-third of all state general fund spending.
The pension budgets and amounts are:
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HB 116/(SURS) State University Retirement System/$980.5 million
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HB 3639/(TRS) Teachers Retirement System/$2.4 billion
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HB 3697/(SERS) State Employees Retirement System, (JRS) Judicial Retirement System, (GARS) General Assembly Retirement System/$973.6 million
This year, these budgets are being treated as fixed costs and advanced so they will not be put at risk by end-of-session political gamesmanship.
With the pension budgets out of the way, the General Assembly can now focus on discretionary spending and the real cuts needed to balance the governor’s budget proposal.