Following the passage of the fiscal year 2024 budget in the Illinois House of Representatives, State Representative Wayne Rosenthal (R-Morrisonville) issued the following response:
“The budget that passed tonight has minimal input from Republicans and is filled with Democrat pet projects and commits taxpayers to new long-term spending. It is loaded with gimmicks and cost shifts, like reallocating the Personal Property Replacement Tax to the General Revenue Fund and further shortchanging local governments by once again failing to restore the Local Government Distributive Fund to 10%. On top of that, hospitals who haven’t seen a rate increase for 29 years will only see half of their Medicaid rate request met in this budget year.
“The fact that this budget includes a taxpayer-funded healthcare program that covers all expenses for undocumented immigrants with projected costs expected to exceed $1 billion is problematic. Legal residents with health insurance don’t even have access to such generous coverage like this. All of this will put families at risk of future tax hikes or cuts to critical services down the road. At a time when family budgets are still strapped with inflation-induced price hikes, this is the wrong approach.”