Gov. JB Pritzker delivered his budget address

Gov. JB Pritzker delivered his sixth budget address to Illinois lawmakers Wednesday. The 51.7-billion-dollar spending plan includes increased funding for human services, healthcare, education, and more. Below are sound bites from the speech:

Pritzker highlighted his Smart Start early education initiative, saying in its first year, the state exceeded its goal of 5,000 new preschool seats by 15 percent. 

“As a result, right now we have over 82,000 publicly-funded preschool classroom seats—the highest number in our state’s history. Staying on the Smart Start plan, we will achieve universal preschool by 2027.”

 

Pritzker announced plans to push for a new “Healthcare Consumer Access and Protection Act,” which will impose stricter regulations on health insurance companies and the coverage they provide.

Pritzker says so-called “utilization management” is code for denying coverage and must be stopped.

 

Utilization management allows insurance companies to boost profits by requiring that consumers get permission before they receive care. It won’t surprise you to know that those requests are frequently denied.

 

Pritzker says doctors and patients should be in charge of making healthcare decisions – not insurance companies: 

 We should never, ever, ever, ever cede those decisions to the whims of insurance executives whose focus is always on the bottom line.

 

Pritzker again called on the Biden Administration and Congress to work together to respond to the wave of migrants. He says states and cities are not equipped to deal with the influx of people from the southern border:

 

“The White House and the federal government need to step up—to coordinate and manage these asylum seekers when they cross the border. (applause)”

 

Although Gov. Pritzker’s spending plan calls for spending $1.8 billion more than the current fiscal year, financial forecasters are predicting a deficit next year. Pritzker says his proposed budget makes – quote – hard choices. 

This year’s budget proposal is focused and disciplined, and because of the responsible actions we took in the last few years paying off state debt and treating federal pandemic relief as one time revenue, we are not facing the budgetary challenges that other big states are this year.

 

Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza calls Governor JB Pritzker’s budget proposal “spot on.” 

“It is hard to come in flat. People always want to spend more money, and he did a good job of setting the tone that we should not be spending more money - and every dollar that we spend should have a proven return on investment.”

Mendoza says the influx of migrants is a humanitarian issue – not a political issue.

 

“I am not happy that we’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this. But I’m sure as hell going to track every penny of it, and make sure that we can go back and make our case to Washington that this was their problem, they’ve got to help us fix it.”