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How the Senate Democrats lost

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Illinois

* My weekly syndicated newspaper column is about a big Senate Democratic defeat…

Gov. Pat Quinn was willing to offer up only the tiniest of face-saving possibilities to the Illinois Senate Democrats last week: Drop your budget demands, and we’ll talk about them this fall, but do it soon or bad things will happen.

On the last day of the spring legislative session, the Senate Democrats tried to add about $430 million in extra state program spending to a bill that was supposed to only pay for construction projects. They tacked on the spending to force the House to bow to their demands. The idea was that the House would want to protect the construction projects so much that they’d be willing to accept the Senate’s increased budget spending.

It didn’t work.

The House Republicans refused to go along, and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan wouldn’t agree either because he’d made a budget pact with the Republicans months earlier. No spending would be approved without both parties first agreeing to it, and the Republicans used their veto power.

Even the Senate Republicans made it crystal clear that they were firmly opposed to anything other than a “clean” capital bill with no additional budget spending. The Senate Republicans have long made capital spending a top priority. They even broke ranks with Madigan to side with then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich over passing a capital bill a few years ago.

But Senate GOP Leader Christine Radogno has been the greatest advocate for keeping contruction spending completely separate from the budget. Two years ago, when Quinn first agreed to that budget/capital separation and then attempted to combine the two anyway, Speaker Madigan publicly warned that Quinn would run into a “buzz saw” of opposition from Radogno. The governor eventually backed off.

Many road builders and the construction unions were also totally opposed to any sort of deal that mixed capital projects and the budget. Their opposition empowered Radogno.

Quinn, who publicly sympathized for months with the Senate Democrats’ desire to spend more money, couldn’t even bring himself to jump on board the final Senate Democratic demand that the construction program be approved for just six months instead of twelve so that a new budget deal could be crafted in January.

The construction projects — including roads, bridges, schools and a host of other things — are just too important to the economy to play games with, the governor reportedly told all four legislative leaders during a meeting last week. He also warned that construction projects would begin to shut down within a few days if a decision wasn’t made quickly.

Quinn’s attempt to tie the capital and budget issues together two years caused him big problems during last year’s campaign. Unions representing the construction industry were so upset at the governor’s games that they refused to endorse him until after Republican candidate Bill Brady moved way too far to the right (Brady eventually backed a “right to work” plank). The governor apparently learned his lesson.

With Quinn on the other side, the Senate Democratic members who pushed for that extra spending were completely surrounded by hostile forces. Failure looked imminent.

Many Senate Democrats who earlier disagreed with tying the extra spending to the construction projects had laid low for weeks. The last two caucus meetings about this topic had been exceptionally brutal. So, they were naturally fearful of being subjected once again to the same way-over-the-top personal attacks that were levied at them during those end-of-session private meetings, which wound up forcing everybody down what turned out to be a dead-end street.

The Senate Democrats met together via teleconference the day after the governor sat down with the four legislative leaders. Without that face-to-face pressure of physically meeting together in Senate President John Cullerton’s Statehouse office, the members who disagreed with the caucus’ course were emboldened to speak out. Democrats who quietly took abuse in previous meetings jumped in early to say enough was enough and the battle needed to end.

The meeting lasted about an hour, and in the end they decided to back off. Quinn’s decision to go against the Senate Democrats turned out to be the deciding factor. When you have a guy who’s pushed for more spending all year suddenly decide to not push for more spending, it quickly became obvious that their attempt to spend more money had become a losing cause.

Thoughts?

posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 9:30 am

Comments

Insightful column as always.

But I just love how R lawmakers still want to crow about how they held ranks on an R issue (possibly for the first time in history) and voted against the big income tax increase in January. Meanwhile the new budget they brag about and take partial credit for, relies on the revenue from that very same tax increase!

It’s also shameless to moan about the tax increase when so many Rs voted for the gambling expansion. That’s an admission they don’t think the tax increase was big ENOUGH. Rs and Ds voted for billions more, above and beyond the new revenue from the tax increase.

Comment by just sayin' Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 9:53 am
“. That’s an admission they don’t think the tax increase was big ENOUGH.”

Or possibly that the state is still spending too much…

Comment by Cincinnatus Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 10:00 am
Quinn backing away from the additional approp request was not helpful. I expect to options on the budget:
1. sign it, pull a Teddy Roosevelt on appropriations (thinking about human services here)
2.) sign it, create a crisis for human services like he’s done the last three years, throw providers under the bus and make them beg the GA for additional appropriations so people don’t go without services.

Either one is just brilliant.

Comment by Leroy Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 10:09 am
yikes, “two” options.

Comment by Leroy Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 10:10 am
there will be significantly fewer human services providers to “throw under the bus” after July 1st. Some may survive merely by rejecting state contracts and only serving those within walking distance of their facility, returning to being a “community based” organization and no longer accepting state agency clients referred from throughout the metro area.

Is the state still tracking and admitting waiting lists for human services programs? It is bad already, but watch it soar. This is not a responsible manner to save state government expenditures, and if the Republicans were in charge the Democrats would be giving them major grief over it.

Sad, sad, sad.

Comment by Capitol View Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 10:57 am
I guess the real question based on Rich’s article is why did President Cullerton go along with the added spending amendment to the construction projects bill? Doesn’t he call the shoots, or did he lose control of his own majority? Clearly he would have had Republican support to shoot down the amendement.

It also now seems very unlikely that the General Assembly will vote for a supplementary budget either later this year. That is how Democrats and some Republicans justified voting for less State aid for schools, formally not reducing the foundation level per child, yet reducing funding. School districts are also not assuming there will be a supplementary budget and will make the cuts necessary to have theoretically balanced budgets.

Comment by Rod Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 12:08 pm
Good Lord!
We are depending on Quinn and Madigan to keep from being screwed by Democrats!

I guess they are feeling sorry for us.

Comment by VanillaMan Monday, Jun 20, 11 @ 9:23 pm