Progress Illinois

Spending cuts for Medicaid is dominating talk in Springfield, as both Democrats and Republicans point the finger at the health care program as one of the main causes of the state’s budget woes. The current Medicaid debate, though, is perhaps misleading. Read more »

An summit geared towards the immigrant community Saturday highlighted Illinois’ pro-immigrant policies and also controversy between Cook County and federal immigration officials.

The Illinois Coalition of Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which has 130 member organizations, held their 2nd annual Illinois Immigrant Integration Summit at Malcolm X College, featuring appearances by Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, among other officials.

Read more »

While the interests of big business seem to be very much so on the radar of Springfield politicians, as evidenced by the passage of recent corporate tax break packages, the needs of children — and the impact of passed legislation and cuts on Illinois' youngest residents — may not always be as prevalent in political discussions as it should be. 

One state organization is hoping to change that with the unveiling of a new fiscal policy center aimed at promoting the interests of Illinois children while also detailing the impact of budget and tax policies on one of the Prarie State's most vulnerable populations.

Read more »

That's the number of jobs lost each time the state reduces general fund spending by just 1 percent, according to a new report by Make Wall Street Pay Illinois and the Alliance for a Just Society.

The four-page report, The Cost of Cuts in Illinois: Budget Cuts Hurt Families, Communities, and the Economy (PDF), found that thousands of lost jobs can be associated with cuts in state spending, which is only exacerbated by corporate tax breaks, like the recent ones given to the Chicago Board Options Exchange and the CME Group.

Read more »

The following is a statment from AFSCME on the Civic Federation's new report on the state budget.

The patient, state government, is ailing. Symptoms include chronic failure to adequately fund basic services or pay bills, forcing harmful cuts. But this report fails to diagnose the cause, while the bitter medicine it prescribes offers no cure.

Illinois’s persistent mismatch between costs and revenues—its structural deficit—results from a broken and unfair tax system that fails to capture economic growth and squeezes the middle class while granting rich people lower effective tax rates and allowing two-thirds of all corporations to pay no corporate income tax at all.

Read more »