At Wednesday's gubernatorial debate, GOP nominee Bill Brady made an odd claim. The Republican said the state doesn't know which social service providers it owes money to. Watch it:

The Tribune's Eric Zorn followed up on this. The comptroller's office reported Thursday afternoon that there are 204,688 unpaid vouchers worth $5.4 billion sitting on Dan Hynes' desk. "We know with great specificity what is owed and to whom," Hynes' spokesman Alan Henry told the Tribune. "Anybody who wants to know who we owe money to from the bills in our office simply has to request the information."

To be fair, neither candidate has offered a concrete plan to pay off this debt. But suggesting that the payment records don't exist is another "airy and insubstantial" attack from a candidate Zorn calls "Sen. Cotton Candy." "Bite into his finely spun rhetoric," he adds, "and there's almost nothing there." Read his full column here.

UPDATE (3:03 p.m.): Archpundit has more on the topic here.