House Passes Budget Plan, Includes Pension Borrowing

By Marcus Gilmer in News on May 26, 2010 2:20PM

With the May 31 deadline looming to get a budget passed without a super-majority, the state House managed to pass a $4 billion borrowing plan to cover the state's five public employee pension plans. It took two votes to get the legislation passed as it fell one vote short of passage earlier Tuesday before being passed with the necessary 71 votes last night. The swing vote, according to the Tribune, turned out to be Rep. David Miller, D-Lynwood, who also happens to be running for state comptroller. Miller apparently had a change of heart after a pow-wow with House Speaker Mike Madigan and House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie in Gov. Quinn's office in which Miller insists he wasn't promised anything in exchange for his vote, telling reporters after the vote, “You’ve got to do the mature thing which is to at least get us through this crisis, no matter how bad it is... At some point you have to do some soul searching about why you’re here in the first place." You can check out the voting breakdown here [PDF]; GOP Reps Bob Biggins and Bill Black voted with Dems on the plan.

The pension plan was a self-proclaimed requirement by Gov. Quinn to earn his approval for the budget. Capitol Fax has some compelling video of Quinn giving House GOP Leader Tom Cross the stare-down during a speech before voting (Pritchard wound up voting "present"). But the budget gap will remain in the neighborhood of $13 billion plus an additional $6 billion in unpaid bills. While Quinn doesn't get the income tax he was calling for - the House didn't vote on it - he was given authority by the house to make cuts by an Emergency Budget Act, which, according to the AP, would let Quinn, "make many of the decisions on where to cut state spending. It also lets Quinn dip into special government funds and sell off some future income to get cash now."

The budget now heads to the Senate, which should take up the bill today.