Illinois House Floor Debate — July 2, 2017

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Please let the record reflect that Representative Winger is excused."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Republicans request an immediate caucus."

"One hour."

"Mr. Speaker, we request a Roll Call on the Amendment." 10000071.docx 2  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017

"Will the Sponsor yield?"

"Representative Harris, let's just recap what exactly the level of the increase is going to be on individuals in Illinois and businesses in Illinois." Harris, G.: "The individual income tax rate is 4.95 percent and the corporate tax rate would be 7 percent, under this proposal, Mr. Leader."

"Is this a temporary tax increase?" Harris, G.: "No, this increase would be permanent."

"As you know, during the course of our negotiations over the past many weeks, we have contemplated, as part of a way to bring closure to this budget impasse, would be the consideration of a temporary tax increase, in addition to cuts in state spending and also responsible reforms. That is what the Governor has committed to and what I have committed to. What in this legislation… let me hold that thought. Now here's this question I have. You talked about handling the bill backlog. Could you explain to me how that is addressed in this legislation?" 10000071.docx 5  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 Harris, G.: "This is the revenue package… portion of the package. It creates revenue, and along with the spending package, there will be several hundred million dollars that would be a surplus that could be used in a number of ways to pay down the pension. And as I'm sure your negotiators have informed you, you know, in… in the negotiations between the four Caucuses, there have been several ways we've discussed utilizing these funds along with proposals that came from the House and Senate Republican budget regarding, you know, interfund borrowing and use of other funds. We've talked about how to service the… create an income stream for this service of bonds to pay off some of the backlog of bills without having to raise additional revenue just from sources within our current stream. Those are still to be negotiated and those are… you know, not in this Bill. They would be in a separate Bill."

"That would be in a 'bimp' or the Budget Implementation Act, correct?" Harris, G.: "That would be in the 'bimp', and also then, the bond authorization, which I believe is Senate Bill 42."

"But we still have not come to an agreement on how we have… are going to address the $15 billion. You've laid out some options, but this vote today is not going to begin the process for the Comptroller. Let's say it passes; and it passes the Senate. There is nothing in there that is going to begin the down payment of these backlog of bills. Isn’t that correct? There's options, but there's no mechanism in this legislation to address that." 10000071.docx 6  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 Harris, G.: "The surplus revenue would immediately go to pay down the backlog of bills."

"In light of the Federal Courts order from last Friday, which the Comptroller was ordered to pay Medicaid and managed care organizations at a monthly rate of $586 million per month, how are we going to be able to address that backlog when we already have an order from the courts? Who's going to force us to make those payments above and before anything else?" Harris, G.: "Leader, I would say that stabilizing our state's financial situation has got to be our top priority. I think we've seen the advice from the bond houses that if we do not show signs that we are putting our fiscal house in order, that we are returning stability to our state by passing a balanced budget with new revenues and expense reductions, then our bonds will go to junk status, our task in paying down those old bills will be higher. Then there is the other option. If we punt as a Legislature again, if we decide, well, we're not going to pass it this week, and we have no budget and no appropriation authority, I think that leaves us in even a worse situation. I cannot under… I cannot think of a worse situation then leaving here without a balanced budget and revenues to pay for it."

"Was there a budget that was introduced by the Majority Party this last General Assembly before the… we broke at the end of May?" Harris, G.: "This is the budget that's before us now, Mr. Leader."

"But it wasn’t passed. It was not… it was nothing that was introduced in the month of May though, correct?" 10000071.docx 7  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 Harris, G.: "You're correct."

"And would you consider that a punt or not?" Harris, G.: "I would consider it important to us now that we are beyond the end of our fiscal year to solve our problem, to pass a budget. I think the bond houses are looking at us. I think everyone across the State of Illinois is looking to see what are we going to do today. Are we going to pass revenues? Are we going to pass expenses? That's the job that's before us."

"This is clearly not negotiated with the Governor's Office, correct?" Harris, G.: "You're correct."

"And so, do you believe that by passing this Bill today, without an indication from the Governor, is going to change the credit rating of the State of Illinois,\ or put it in any… in a better place?" Harris, G.: "I cannot speak to how the Governor… Governor's signature or lack thereof, today, would affect the credit rating decision. If I'm understanding your question correctly."

"Yes. It's not going… my… my belief is that by passing this today, and without having a mechanism, which has been complicated by the Federal Court, is going to address one penny of the $15 billion in our backlog, which I believe will… I mean, I'm not an expert in this, but I don’t think it's going to help us. I think it just may further hurt us. Now, I'm going to get back to this…" Harris, G.: "Leader, you know, to… you know if you wonder what happens should we not pass a budget today regarding those 10000071.docx 8  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 court orders, whether it's the court order for Beekss and Memisovski or the DCFS court order, those will remain in effect. I'm sure the plaintiffs will gut this to be back in and say there's a failure to perform by the Legislature. There's no appropriation to provide these services. Those judges will order us to continue to pay out at a rate that will probably be higher than if we had a budget in place. And the situation will continue to get worse."

"I know people don’t like to continue with negotiations and I would tend to disagree. We first saw a budget, a spending plan, from the… your caucus on Tuesday, Tuesday of last week… of this week. We did not have an opportunity to work with the House Democrat staff until both the Senate Democrats and the House Democrats had reconciled their spending. Some point on Friday was the first time in which Republicans were brought to the dance to begin the negotiation process of where we need to be and how can we resolve these problems. So, I'm just kind of perplexed that we're… one we're doing a revenue Bill before we're doing a spending Bill. The spending Bill that was a new one, that was introduced at 2:15 this afternoon, and it's approximately 5:15 right now, was 638 pages, that is still under review by my staff. But we're being asked to vote for a tax increase without quite knowing exactly what is going to be in the spending Bill. So, it's… it's usual. It’s the usual process we have over here. I just want to make sure the freshmen know how this usually works. When you are in the Minority, you really don’t… you're given the impression that you have a meaningful role in negotiating budgets, but at the end of the day, the House Democrats do 10000071.docx 9  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 what they want. They throw together a spending plan at the last minute, take it or leave it, and try to play that… this story line that, you know, this is concepts that have been addressed and we’ve reviewed and we've discussed and have been vetted, but it really isn’t. Putting in a spending Bill, a new spending Bill, at this day with only three hours to review of billions and billions and billions of dollars to spending, 638 pages, to me is not an exercise in good faith. I made a statement last Friday. I said that negotiations were going in a good direction and I said as a sign of good faith, I'm going to put my name in… not my name, I'm going to put a vote on a new spending plan, because I believe that we had made progress and I believe we still are making good progress. We were making good progress, not only on budgeting, revenue, but also priorities for my caucus, which are structural reforms within the State of Illinois. There's nothing that we are taking up today that reflects the progress that we've made with workmen's compensation reform. And our people, in this state, who are interested in property tax relief, we're asking more of them. We are going to be voting for the largest tax increase in Illinois, but we forget that there's people outside of this chamber that are going to pay for it. We've believed that property tax relief is a fair way to provide some measure of responsibility to our citizens who are asking to pay more. So, I just got a few more statements to make and I want to get back to the Comptroller's response to the court order last Friday. And until meaningful… meaningful reductions are done with the bill backlog, she will delay all government payroll, including lawmakers, school repayments, 10000071.docx 10  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 and pensions. There's nothing in here. There's concepts in which can go towards at least thoughts and some ideas in how we can attract… we can… attack the backlog, but there's nothing there. So, I will just say this that I've been at this job for a long time. And I've… I don’t have to make the case of how I work with the Democrat Majority, I've done that through my career, I've done that this Session. This is a very difficult situation that we are in. We have participated in good faith, I have, every day, to find the right balance in how we can fix Illinois, not just by raising taxes but reducing spending. And also, making sure there are meaningful reforms to make Illinois attractive state for families and for businesses. Without that, the exodus will continue. I am disappointed that we are taking this up at this moment, when there has been significant… significant progress, to address the priorities of the Governor, and also the priorities of this caucus. And for that reason, I will be voting 'no'."

"Mr. Speaker, to the Bill. I'm an optimist. I believe that our greatest days are ahead in this state. We have the greatest people, we have outstanding national resources, Chicago is the greatest city in the world, there's no doubt about it. But what we need in this state is we need more jobs and we need more taxpayers. We need economic growth. That's the best way to produce revenue. We need to adopt policies that are going to create jobs. And one thing that I know for sure is that the small businesses of this state, that are creating 80 percent of the jobs, are going to be hurt by this. They're paying at the individual tax rate. A 32 percent 10000071.docx 11  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 increase in the individual tax rate is going to lead to less jobs, and less revenue, and more people leaving the State of Illinois. It's a lot of talk. And I respect Greg Harris, he's one of the best Legislators there is. Even though I disagree with him 90 percent of what he says, he's a good man. But I hear all this talk… I hear all this talk right about the New York bond houses. What about the human faces in the State of Illinois that are going to be hurt by this? I spoke with a constituent, Lynn Iverson, this morning. Lynn had a husband, a couple years ago, who died of colon cancer. She has a son who has leukemia. And my friend, Marcus Evans, we went to a Bears game and he was an example to that young man of somebody who survived cancer, somebody who is a good person. I spoke with her this morning and I said how are you going to pay for the higher taxes? And she said that she's going to have to deplete her savings. She has a son in chemotherapy. She has private insurance by the way. She is going to have to reduce babysitting expenses. She is going to have to be in a situation that she is not going to be able to go out. And she said to me that she feels bad, but she needs to admit that she won't even be able to take her son, who has leukemia, on any vacations because the money that she's going to be paying the $6 thousand in higher taxes to the State of Illinois. So, let's put a human faces. Let's forget about the New York bond houses and let's do what's right for the taxpayers of this state. They are going to get screwed again by Pat Quinn's budget. This is Pat Quinn's budget all over again. And let me say, to Lynn Iverson that the State of Illinois doesn’t deserve more of your money. We have Bill Cellini with a $2.4 10000071.docx 12  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 million lease in this state, more insider dealings. We have… and God bless Mary Flowers, you're right about DCFS. They're paying cash bonuses to closed cases on little babies. So, does anybody really, truly believe that the State of Illinois deserves more money? We've done nothing in this Bill to reform Medicaid. We have done nothing to reform pensions. Let's do the right thing for once. Let's stand up for taxpayers. Vote 'no'."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. I've been getting a lot of emails about both SB9 and SB6 to support or oppose this budget. When I look at these emails to support this budget, I see that most of the addresses come from either 10000071.docx 15  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 Springfield or Chicago. Then when I look at the emails from the opponents of this massive tax hike, I see that most of the emails are coming from the towns that I represent. Then, I start to read the contents of these emails, and I see the ones that support this budget, are usually just a form letter. Then when I go to the emails that oppose this budget, and they are from the towns that I represent. Finally, I look at the bottom of that email, and I see who it's from. And I see that the supporters are usually lobbyists or special interest groups. And then when I look at the opponents of this tax hike, the names look much more familiar, because, some of them are my neighbors, some are my constituent; they're from my… my district. And to give you an idea, so one of them, his name is Brent, and he says, I'm trying to save my home, please don’t raise my taxes. And then there's another, her name is Megan. And she is a small business owner, and she says, please don’t hike my taxes; I can't afford anymore. So, I ask before all of us vote on this Bill, think about who you stand with. Do you want to stand with lobbyists and special interest groups or do you want to stand with the people? Now, I trust everyone here. I trust the Sponsor. I trust the people on the other side of the aisle. I trust my colleagues. I also trust that if you take a moment and think about that question, that you will do the right thing, when you press the red button. I urge a 'no' vote."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. The other day I was talking about, I forget what the Bill was, but we were talking about business and the effect of tax policy on business. And I think there's this perception that people in business belong to country clubs, drive luxury cars, fly all over the world, have multiple homes; that's the perception. So, I want to put some flesh on this. A friend of mine, who used to live in Palatine, had a small business in Schaumburg. He was a small manufacturer. They built niche products for manufacturing. And we had lunch, in Schaumburg, he was telling me about some of the issues and difficulties that he is facing. And he said, I am constantly fighting off competition from foreign competitors. They steal my designs outright or they have designs that are very similar, at a dramatically lower labor cost. They're trying to take my market share. I'm competing with domestic competitors. And as people do, as individuals do, as businesses do, he said I just started looking at the numbers. Where are my inflows and outflows? Both for our business and for me personally. So on a $300 10000071.docx 18  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 thousand home in Palatine, he's looking at his property taxes. He's looking at his income tax. At that time we had the conversation, we were at five percent. He's looking at all the costs for his business. The property taxes he is paying, the workers' compensation cost. He's looking at his utility cost. All those costs. And then he starts comparing if he were to move to a different location and South Carolina is where he was thinking of moving. He said, when I looked at it, I would save $46 thousand moving my family and my business to South Carolina, $46 thousand dollars a year. Now this is someone with one child in college and another headed to college. He said, I could pay for college outright for my kids without going into debt. I could have more cushion for my business if there was another economic downturn. How could I turn that down? How could I turn that down? I like living in Illinois, but how could I turn that down? And I just shook my head and I said, I'm trying to make things more attractive for you. Six months later, he closed that business. Nine people are newly… were newly unemployed in the northwest suburbs. So, when we talk about the need for jobs and we talk about the need for economic development and economic growth, these are the stories that we're talking about. And we as consumers and businesses, all you're doing is your looking at what are my costs? Am I getting a proper return for what I'm paying? We do it when, you know, with our cell phone service, for the products we buy, for the restaurants we eat at, for where we… what kind of things we buy. We're always looking… am I getting good value for the money I'm paying? And this is an individual who, when it all came down to it, he said I'm 10000071.docx 19  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 not getting enough value for what I'm paying. He left and it is Illinois's loss. It's a loss for… of jobs for people who need jobs, in my district, in your districts. We are hurting ourselves badly. Another business owner from my district, and again we're talking about a small business owner who did not start with a lot, put all his capital on the line, no guarantee of success… no guarantee of success. Said to me, remind your colleagues, Valparaiso, Indiana, is literally 40 minutes over the border. Property taxes are 30 percent of what ours are; income taxes are a half percent lower; sales taxes are three percent lower. If you pass another tax increase, you're beginning to make it financially worthwhile to drive an hour back in Illinois, to escape the madness. My friends, we need reforms that are driving the cost up. That are driving the need… nobody is saying no taxes. We all know that people need taxes. We all know that we need a certain level of government. But the question is, what can we afford, what can our constituents afford, what can the job creators afford? We've lost Congressional seats. Why? Because the flight from Illinois is real. And it gets harder and harder and harder to meet our obligations to our pension systems, to those who are reliant on Medicaid, to those who are reliant on our schools, to those who are, are reliant on government. It gets harder and harder to pay those bills if our tax base is eroding. Please…"

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?"

"Representative, I'm looking at the Roll Call here on the Amendment, and this measure is going to pass. You anticipated passing, correct?" Harris, G.: "That will be up to the people in this chamber and, you know, how they choose to decide the fate of our state this afternoon."

"Presuming… we'll just presume that they're going to do this. When this gets to the Governor's desk, and he vetoes it, are you going to move to override that Veto?" Harris, G.: "Mr. Breen, my job here today is to explain what's in this Bill, to advocate for its passage, and to try to save the State of Illinois from a cataclysmic disaster."

"Well, so you're saying that you're not going to move to override the Veto when it comes back…" Harris, G.: "I… Mr. Breen…"

"…if the state is going to explode without this in law?" Harris, G.: "Mr. Breen, I'm not talking about anything today other than the passage of this Bill. We will wait for the Governor to make his decision when it arrives on his desk."

"But you have said, that if this doesn’t go into law as soon as humanly possible, the state collapses." Harris, G.: "I would urge him to sign it. If he doesn’t, if 25 thousand workers are in fact laid off from our public transportation areas. If 36 thousand seniors lose services. If the folks who are suffering from cancer…"

"Well and… and… and Greg, you're not answering my question; you're now going off to something else. And just to be clear, this Bill requires a Veto-proof Majority to get out of this chamber and out of the Senate, correct?" 10000071.docx 21  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 Harris, G.: "I believe those are the correct numbers."

"Thank you. Mr. Speaker, to the Bill. Today, middle- income taxpayers pay the highest combined income, sales, and property taxes in the country. Today, we are 50th worst in property taxes, 27th worst in sales taxes, and 30th worst in income taxes. Today, when you include all 50 states and the District of Columbia, we are the absolute worst. That's 51st in the country for tax burden, on middle-income families, today. Should we… well, when this chamber sends the income tax out, if it does go into law, our income tax rating would go from 30th worst in the country down to somewhere between 46th to 48th worst in the country. As a practical matter, that means that if someone then with a full-time job is going to have to work an extra three days next year… this… starting July 1, yesterday… have to work an extra three days just to bring home the same amount of money that they were bringing home before. Now… for the people of the State of Illinois who are paying too much in property taxes, there's no relief here. For working folks, there's no relief here. There's no reform here, for our bloated State Government. There's no cleaning up a corrupt politics. There's no sign that anything is going to change in Springfield. With all do deference, who in their right mind would agree to send more money to the State Government of the State of Illinois? Now let's be clear, I understand there are Republican Members who are planning to vote for this measure. The public universities they represent are crumbling. The service providers in their districts are going bankrupt. Government workers in their districts are worried about their jobs. And those Members feel they have no 10000071.docx 22  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 choice, and that is certainly understandable. But let's remember why we are here today. This is essentially a blackmail budget. We are here today because reform negotiations, which were continuing in good faith, are now being cut off. Because there's nothing more these folks can do. They have to act because of their feeling about their districts. Ladies and Gentlemen, there are reforms that can be negotiated. We can get back to the table. We can fix this impasse. But this is not the right way to do it. Please vote 'no'."

"Thank you. This is the wrong plan at the wrong time. We need to fix our job creation problem first. In Illinois, last quarter, we had .6 percent income growth, the weakest in the nation. We have the worst income growth when you look from 2007 to 2016, .9 percent. Our economy is too weak for a tax hike and you know it. You know we need jobs. You complain about it all the time. And you won't fix our job creation problems. Instead, you want to take this low-income growth and you want to add on a tax increase. A tax increase that will take any income growth away from people that are working hard in this state. In fact, the only people that are going to gain on this, are the public sector unions 'cause they 10000071.docx 23  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 have baked into their contracts enormous percentage growths, enormous. Stephen Lane changes COLA changes. They're the only ones who are going to gain in this tax increase. Not the hardworking people that live down the street from me and have regular jobs and are small business men. Every bit that they earn in additional revenue you're going to take. For what? For what? Oh, I brought my checkbook today; I brought it. Maybe my tax increase that we pay as a family maybe I should send it to Dr. Baker. The newly former NIU President who was caught… in an OEIG investigation not following our procurement reforms. Instead, he's going to get a $600 thousand payout. Maybe I should send it to him. Maybe I should send it to the University of Illinois. Who continues to have on their staff, James Kilgore, a convicted felon responsible for a murder, who hid out for 26 years before he was caught. He shouldn’t be teaching at the University of Illinois. But maybe I should send my tax increase to him, since he's employed there. And when I'm done sending my increase to the State of Illinois, then I'll get out my checkbook and I'll send another property tax bill to my county, to pay for bloated administrative salaries in public schools. In public schools, where on average in the State of Illinois, less than half of the students are ready for college. Just over one- third are even reading and doing math at grade level. Maybe I need to send them more money. Because the property tax freeze is not a freeze, and you all know it. Instead, maybe I should send it to my superintendent. Maybe I should make it out to him since he's going to be getting, you know, a 3 to 4 million dollars pension at the end of this, because he 10000071.docx 24  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 hadn’t fixed the pension problem either. Maybe I should send it to the park district. Maybe I should send it to, oh yeah, Mr. Murphy. Mr. Murphy, who's still… who's still in the state pension system making $330 thousand, as the Director for the Association for Park Districts. Maybe I should send it to him, because he's going to have a nice fat pension too that we have to pay for. Meanwhile, when I write checks to the park district, it's for everything I do individually for my kids. In fact, I spent almost a thousand bucks this summer just on summer camps and nearly all of those were at the public high school for my two kids. But you know what, you're just going to ask for more money. More money from people, and you haven’t shrunk the size of government at all. Not at all. Let me read from this. Peter writes me, I've been a lifelong resident of this great state and had a 40-year career on a Chicago railroad and was a dues-paying union member. Prior to retirement, I had seriously pondered leaving Illinois due to its great tax burdens. I watched, from an industrial point of view, numerous operations leave Illinois for the same reason. Raising the tax rate is only a dressing on a deeply infected wound of this state's budget problems. He's right; he's absolutely right. Or maybe you want to talk to Mr. Bordner, whose story was highlighted in Illinois Policy Institutes Brief. Mr. Bordner, he's from Decatur, he says, the house his parents have listed for just over 100 thousand, comes with nearly $4 thousand in property taxes each year. Now you're going to raise his taxes too. Research from the Nonpartisan Tax Foundations shows the median property tax bill for a Macon County homeowner is $2,004. That's a higher median bill than 10000071.docx 25  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 most counties in Illinois. The state with the highest property taxes in the nation. But you know what, go ahead, high property taxes, let's just send some more income taxes to bloated government at every single level. Stop the madness."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. For many of us in this room today, whether you are voting 'no' or whether you are voting 'yes', this quite possibly could be the toughest vote that you take. I know that's the case for me. I voted 'yes' on the Amendment and I'm voting 'yes' on Third Reading. And let me just take a few minutes to explain why. First of all, nobody should celebrate should this Bill pass because we should have never gotten to this point to begin with. It is shameful and it is embarrassing. And never should we have gotten to the point where we are literally on the brink of collapse for the State of Illinois. Come tomorrow morning, at the open of business, if we don’t get this done, we will become the first state in the history of the United States of America… the first state in the history of the United States of America to be in junk bond status. After that point, regardless of whatever deal we get, it's going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars more to get the deal done. Not to mention the trajectory that we are on right now is immoral. We have to have a budget. We have to have a budget. Health care providers are owed billions of dollars. Small business owners are carrying the weight on their shoulders for the entire state. Their lines of credit have dried up; their vendors are cutting them off. What are we going to do with those people that suddenly have nowhere to live? What's 10000071.docx 26  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 the game plan? Is the National Guard going to take them? Are we shipping them off to other states? We're broke. We have no money. We have to have a budget. And for goodness sakes, do I have to explain why it's important for our kids to go to school come this fall? In my district, there is a very, very high likelihood that the Canton School District will not open. The simple truth is that without this we will lose thousands of lives and thousands of jobs. And the alternative is so much worse. I don’t like this. This isn’t easy. This is really, really difficult, but the alternative is much worse than this. The alternative is literally taking our state off the cliff. We need to end this. This needs to stop. Now I know, that by voting for this there's going to be threats, there's going to be booing tactics, they're already happening. Because the fact of the matter is, both sides have extreme fringe groups that don’t always tell the truth, believe it or not. And both sides are doing that and there's no trust in this place. This environment, all we have is a very toxic environment, with political gotchas. It's got to end. It has to stop. We can't continue to do this to our state. At the end of the day, I'm going to be able to rest easy because I'm going to know that we've saved billions of dollars in spending, we've saved hundreds of millions more by avoiding junk bond status, and we've saved lives, and we've saved jobs. Now many of us talk all the time, and we have big issues and we have small issues, and you have to decide, and we… we compromise. And you have to decide is this the sword that I'm going to die on? And sometimes you have to turn the other way and say 'no', I got to pick my battles. But for me, 10000071.docx 27  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 today, right here, right now, this is the sword that I am willing to die on. And if it costs me my seat, then so be it. I carry with me all the time a poem. And many people that know me, know me well, that I have this… these words with me at all times and I just want to share these words with you briefly because I think the Body could help with this, and it'll… I'll be very brief. It says, it’s the Anyway poem, and it's made famous by Mother Teresa and it says, 'People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.' And finally Ladies and Gentlemen, 'Give the world the very best you have, and it may never be enough; But Give the world the very best you have anyway.' Now I am not perfect, but I try very, very hard to live my life that way. And I assure you that I give this job the very best that I have every day. And I urge you to please… to please consider voting 'yes' on this, so that we can put this insanity behind us once and for all and avoid being the first state in the history of the United States to go into junk bond status. Thank you, Mr. Speaker."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. There's a lot of discussion today regarding the crucial point at which we find ourselves as a state. We're on the verge of junk bond status, and pressure points exist everywhere in the state. But the real question is, how have we reached this point of desperation? We’ve been in Springfield for two weeks to… to come to an agreement but we never saw a single budget Bill until three days ago. Prior to that, we had the entire month 10000071.docx 34  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 of May to see legislation, and we saw nothing. Turn the clock back even further, to previous Sessions, when budgets were introduced in this chamber that were wildly out of balance. You know, as long as I've been here, we've sped past one fiscal deadline after another with no progress. Meanwhile, we haven’t broken our addiction to spending. How many Bills did we see pass that would add millions if not billions of new spending to our budget? We have one of four adults and one of two children in this state on Medicaid, and we voted… this Body voted to expand Medicaid even knowing that federal funding would roll back within a couple of years. We have a budget proposal right now that includes spending for a project that doesn't even exist anymore. So, here we are on the brink. Many in this Body support this tax increase to protect correctional facilities, road projects, universities, and social services agencies. But I have to ask, who's protecting taxpayers in this state? The single parents, the family of six, with two working parents that struggle to make ends meet. The small business owner who's trying to keep his employees on the payroll, and the seniors who are in jeopardy of losing their homes. My district doesn’t have universities, it doesn’t have prisons, it doesn’t have large segments of state employees. But what we do have, is taxpayers who are struggling to keep up with astronomical property taxes in my district, some of the highest in the state. As a district that borders Wisconsin, my community struggled to attract or keep businesses that could just as easily relocate five minutes north of the border where property taxes are cheaper, and government dysfunction is minimal. I just wanted to read 10000071.docx 35  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 a couple of emails that I've gotten from constituents in my district. One says, how do you politicians expect property owners to pay their outrageous property taxes with less income? My property taxes have increased $3500 in four years to $14 thousand per year. And he adds a few exclamation points. This is more than my income increase is each year, and now you want to tax me more by taking away from my income. People are leaving the state in record numbers because they're tired of the nonsense. This takes businesses and income away from Illinois. I have another person who wrote and just weighed in on this… and if I can find them I'll tell you what she says… she says we just can't afford to keep raising taxes, we won't have enough tax-paying people here. We are small business owners that could be hiring more people, if we didn’t have all the expenses we do. We pay over $24 thousand just in property taxes. Due to the tax increases, we've had to raise rent for the tenants in our apartment building and will be selling the house that my parents have been in, in order to move them to subsidized rental for seniors. So, these are just a couple of the emails… numerous emails that I get from people in my district, who are bearing the weight of the property tax burden that they have to… they have to bear along with now a potential income tax increase. For these reasons, I have to protect my taxpayers, the families and seniors and singles, who want and need structural change who can't continue to be the ATM that funds programs, that can't live within their means. I really… I just want to be clear. I respect the votes of those who believe we must pull our state back from the cliff. I really do. But it's also very clear 10000071.docx 36  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 that because there is minimal if any structural changes in our spending, it won't be long before we're doing the same thing again arguing for tax increases for the spending that we've never learned to get under control. I believe that whatever vote we take today requires courage, courage to vote your conscience, to vote your district, and to vote really your gut. And after much thought and deliberation, my gut tells me that I have to stand with the taxpayers of the state, and of my district, and insist on systemic reform before we request one of them to pay one more dime in taxes of their diminishing paycheck. It's time to cut up the credit cards; it's time to live within our means and until we can do that, protect our hardworking taxpayers and vote 'no'."

"Thank you… thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. And to the Bill. First of all, I'd like to thank Representative Harris, and the other Members of the other side of the aisle in the work groups that we've been in and working and listening to our thoughts and moving forward with some of them. We appreciate that very much. And we wish that we could continue those before we had had to take this vote today cause that's all I'm going to talk about is that in 2011 we passed a major temporary tax increase in Illinois. And I remember Members of the other side of the aisle saying things will be different, we'll make reforms, we'll make changes, and we won't have to do this again. So, I'm pointing out today, just data. What has changed since then? And why are we back in this position again and looking at a five percent permanent, or 4.9 permanent tax increase? During that time period of 10000071.docx 37  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 those years, the Pew Foundation, which is very well known, said Illinois had the second highest revenue of any state in the United States. We took in $31 billion of new revenue during that time period. And yet, nothing changed. We're still in bad shape, very bad shape, and that's why we're here today. What did change? Did the pensions change? No, our unfunded liability now is over $230 billion of unfunded liability. Two, property taxes. We've addressed that several times today. We have the second highest property taxes of any state in the United States. So, nothing there has changed. Three, workers' comp. We've talked about this for years, nothing has changed. We had a small Bill. We all know we need to have more major… a major Bill on that to improve our workers' comp, and to attract more businesses back to Illinois to stop the second highest outward migration, of any state, in the United States. Four, Medicaid. We know we need to serve the most vulnerable populations. Back in 2011, I would venture to say, it was around 13 or 14 billion dollars. Now, 2017, that number, federally and what we spend, is $22 billion. I never thought it would grow as much. We talked about it growing to 18… maybe $18 billion, $22 billion with federal numbers included in that. Five, the backlog of bills. We talk about it all the time, $14 billion in unpaid bills. Those are just statistics. I'm not making anything up. I'm just saying, where are we now from where we were in 2011? In much worse standing and we're looking at a permanent tax increase, without any changes. And that's what we're trying to do during this time period, and I think we have moved forward. We've moved forward in working on pensions; we've moved forward in working on 10000071.docx 38  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 comp, I think. We've moved forward in working on the property taxes, but none of those have been totally resolved to really when we talk about the bond houses and The Wall Street Journal, what do they think? Yes, you're going to solve the immediate problem of a tax increase, but what have you changed in how your state works and what have you changed in the fiscal policies of your state, so two years from now, four years from now, you don’t end up back here saying, oh, but we need a tax increase. Those are just the ideas, concerns, because I don’t want to be in this position today either. It’s the toughest vote we've all had to make, probably. I just wanted to point those things out that I would like to move forward in more discussions, how we can change the policies of our state before we tax the taxpayers again. Thank you."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Sponsor yield?"

"So, I heard one colleague talk about the right. And I have to tell you, before I go through some things that I kind have jotted down and prepared for this, I would call myself one of the right. I love my guns and I love coal, and I love Illinois. You know, so, if being right is wrong, I'm going to be far right. Okay? But I can still stand here today and say, also in… in defense of a Governor who came here and has probably worked harder than any Governor we've had in decades has put his own money into what he's doing. So, I want us to be careful in how we are talking about the Governor, and what his intentions are, or what the Speaker's intentions are. But 10000071.docx 39  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 I do know this, as someone who's on the right, who is a fiscal conservative we can't have vendors, mom and pop places, be asked to do services for the State of Illinois. Telling them that we're going to pay them for what they do, and then after they perform those services say whoops we don’t have the money to pay you, so we're not going to pay you and we let them go into bankruptcy. So, for all of my colleagues here, who I do truly respect, who say this is about… this is going to hurt small businesses, I get it. I hate tax increases, hate them. And it will hurt small business to do this, but I also think it hurts small business when you ask them to do business with the state and then we don’t pay them. Now I'll tell you this, when I got elected to this seat, a lot of you know that I replaced Representative Mike Bost, and Mike and I think very much alike. We have a little bit different way of approaching it sometimes, but we do think a lot alike. But on the night that I was sworn in, in a courthouse in Murphysboro, Mike took off his legislative pin and he handed it to me and he said, do us well, Representative. I believe Mike wasn’t just talking about Republicans. He sent me here twice. I think he was talking about all the people in my district, and doing the right thing for them, for taxpayers and for those who maybe are farther right than I am. And every day that I've come here, it's been my wish to do that. But I'll also tell you many of you know my husband suffers from epilepsy. So every time I've had to take a vote, where someone said to me, if I take that vote and that 'no' vote I don’t care about epilepsy. That's not true. And every time I took a vote that didn’t fund crisis… crisis women's crisis centers, as 10000071.docx 40  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 somebody who grew up in a household that had severe domestic violence in it, that's not true. I care about every one of those votes we took. But we must have a balanced budget. And if that means that we have to increase taxes right now to do it I, like one of my other colleagues know, I'm probably going to get Primaried on this. Do I want to raise taxes? Absolutely not. Do I think it’s the right thing to do down the road? Absolutely not. And I want… but I want us to remember what we're doing here today. We're asking people to pay the bills for our bad behavior, even before I came here. I don’t have to own what was done before I came here, but I'm telling you, I have to own what's been done here for the last three years. But I do know in the… that one of the things we have been able to do here is this. Time after time after time, in just this past year Bill after Bill after Bill to spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that we don’t have, were defeated. Continuing to bring those Bills to the floor over and over and over again has to stop."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I hope that when this is done… I'm going to vote for Senate Bill 6 and I'm going to vote for Senate Bill 9. I hope that you will help me to bring my university back to the thriving place that it once was. And I hope you'll help me with coal and oil. We have hundred-year reserves in this state. Help me with the things that matter to me, and let's get this state back on the right track. I urge an 'aye' vote."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. Some of you know, I came in huffing and puffing 'cause I was a little late coming back from Friday night's train derailment in Plainfield. Kind of a good analogy for the state the last couple of years. Twenty-five cars piled up, there was leaking oil, and I don’t know if many of you saw the pictures, but there was literally pictures of the train tracks just all ripped apart. I was talking to one of the people on the scene, and he said… he had said, you know, how do people understand, well, there won't be any train traffic in Plainfield anymore? And the guy goes, oh no, it costs Canadian National $2 million per hour that that train track is down. So, I'm calculating in my head and looking at the wreckage. I'm thinking a month or two. This Sunday morning, trains were going down that road. You know why? Because it was their money and it was all hands on deck. And I've been here for two and a half years, and you know what hasn't been for two and a half years? It has not been all hands on deck to make this state run better, to make this state run more efficient for two and a half years. You know there's some small things and there's some big things. We talked about fraud in Medicaid; it’s a big thing. There's some small things; soybean-based ink, remember that? We have two Labor Relation Boards. Why do we need two? We have three Board of Educations. We have the Illinois Community College 10000071.docx 44  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 Board. We have the Illinois Board of Higher Education. We have the Illinois State Board of Education. For different levels for most states or many states have one. One of the things that this does is, we get analysis sometimes; the ICC is against it, the IBHE is for it or vice versa, because… that we've created friction in our own system. We've actually spent money making something more expensive and less efficient. You know, there's been a lot of fight about things like prevailing wage and stuff like that. I had a report done… we had… we had one of the most expensive ways of calculating prevailing wage. We voted this year to make sure it was the most expensive way of prevailing wage. Most states have a minimum job size for small jobs, to make it reasonable for somebody just to hire the local plumber, that's meant for smaller jobs and jobs like that. We didn’t do anything about that. Higher Ed. I talked about the fact, going back two years, when we were funding higher ed, and it's been a travesty to anybody in this… anybody in this chamber should realize how much damage we've done to our reputation and our long-term health of our future with what we did with young people that'll be making hopefully big money in the future. However, before, in 2015 when we were funding, depending on how you calculate it, we were third highest in funding higher ed to eighth highest if you stripped out all pension costs. Yet, we were still charging people more… more tuition than our neighboring states and competitive universities. Why? Do we ever want to put all hands on deck and actually study why it costs so much more to educate a kid in Illinois? Did we want to do that first? No. We play political games. Social 10000071.docx 45  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 services, you ever want to talk to a social service about how much they spend on work comp costs? There's some that spend a half a million dollars on work comp costs. And my school district spends over a million dollars in work comp costs. Hundreds of thousands of dollars could be saved by having average work comp costs. And I talked about ways… throw the Governor's stuff aside. I talked about ways. If you were concerned about the worker and lower costs, and you were concerned about the businesses, the insurance company, the trial lawyers there are ways to make that work comp system more efficient and better for the injured worker. We even had people arguing against reform that would tell the story about how bad our system was, and how long it took to get surgery. That's because of friction in the system that I talked about. So, I don’t know what's going to happen here. I have a feeling, but all I'm asking for is that we look at this as an all hands on deck situation, 'cause we haven’t for as long as I've been here. And I don’t know how far back that goes. And it doesn’t matter if we're Republican or Democrat, and it doesn’t matter whether this tax hike passes and we have a temporary balanced budget. These people are leaving and property taxes are high and this isn’t going to help that situation. It might be a Band-Aid for a while, but it's not going to help the long-term health of what's going on in Illinois. We need to address all those other cost drivers and we need to act together as an all hands on deck because apparently a massive train wreck can be cured in two days. And I'm sure that this Body could do that, if we acted that way. Thank you." 10000071.docx 46  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017

"Thank you, Speaker. To the Bill. On… as a union truck driver, that worked out of Joliet, Illinois, I have witnessed a lot of my union brothers pack up and move to Indiana because of the fact that their property taxes were ranging anywhere from 7 to 15 thousand dollars a year, too expensive. They could purchase a house over there and pay much lower tax rates. I've seen this happen way too often. I've seen people that lived in Danville, fellow drivers, that have skipped across the state line and moved over there, multiple times. I've explained to my union brothers, in order for us to have a union job we have to have a job first. We have to stop… we have to stop getting the cart before the horse. We have to make Illinois business-friendly encourage economic growth. Come to the State of Illinois, so that we can… so that we can all prosper. We can't pay for our public sector… public sector jobs and our social programs, if we're pushing people out of here and our tax base continues to shrink. It's impossible, folks. We… and I… and I share the concerns of some of these people that have talked about family members and friends with health issues, and things like that but, I've got to say, in 10000071.docx 48  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 order to be able to maintain the way that we operate the State of Illinois and take care of those very people, we have to increase our tax base by encouraging economic growth. I see none of that in any of this. I strongly encourage a 'no' vote on this. If we want to make Illinois better, again, if we want to bring jobs back to the State of Illinois if we want to make sure that my family members that are teachers and cops, like my daughter in Peoria, we need to have an economy that can sustain such people as our public sector union jobs. I encourage a 'no' vote on this. Thank you."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. I will be a 'no' on this Bill, and I want to talk briefly about why. What we're doing here, with this Bill and with Senate Bill 6, is we're throwing a field dressing on our poor, poor, poor state that's down and out. We've got that special clotting agent sponge you know that they've got now. And we've put it on our state and we've got her stabilized for transport. But the situation, the status of the state really hasn’t changed in any way. Our state is still really, really, really sick, and it's up to us as the experts, as the Illinois House of Representatives, to fix the problems that brought us here in 10000071.docx 51  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 the first place. Long before our current Governor came here and before I came here, people started leaving the state. The economics weren’t right for them, jobs were better somewhere else, tax burden might be less somewhere else. They just felt that the opportunities for their family were better somewhere else. The same applies to businesses, most of which after all, are owned by families. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree with it or not, our families sit around their kitchen table, or individuals, make their decisions based on their own analysis of what they need to make their life better. What our residents have been telling us, by leaving, by voting with their feet is, they don’t like the analysis and the future they see here for their families. Nothing that we're doing here today with Senate Bill 9, or that we will do with Senate Bill 6, changes the analysis of a single one of our families as they're sitting at their kitchen tables. In fact, I think we're making the decisions worse. Now, these folks don’t have a PhD from the University of Chicago in economics. They don’t know a Laffer Curve from Laugh-In. But they do know that if they want the best future for their children and the best future for their families, they might be better off somewhere else, where there are more jobs, where not so much of their income is taken up for taxes. We have to acknowledge that, people. We can't pretend that that doesn’t exist. We can't pretend that our families aren’t making this decision every day. And it's not just the families in my district. Every single one of our districts is affected. We know there was a recent study that the poorest residents of Illinois are now moving out. So, families in every income group, in every 10000071.docx 52  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 one of our 118 districts, are moving out. So, we have to address the underlying problems. We know what they are. We know the organs that are crying out for attention. It’s the property tax part of the body is like, we need to do something about cutting that off. We need to lop off some parts there. We know the workers comp part is not doing very well. We've been told that over and over and over again. We have to address it. We know pension reform is essential. That part of the body is crying out for some attention. We can give it that attention. We know how. We have to do it. We know school funding is a big issue. We kind have approached that part of the body. We… we put a few instruments on it; we tested them a little bit. And then we haven’t finalized that. We need to finish up with that. We all need to address the underlying problems of the body that have brought us here today. It's not putting… putting some field dressings on it, with this tax increase, and with this spending plan, without addressing the underlying disease of the drivers of costs, without finding some way to reduce them, all of us working together for the benefit of all our districts, we cannot move forward. I'm going to take a page out of the book of my sister from the City of Chicago who said, we need to look to the future here, and we need to work together to address the challenges of the future. I completely agree. Just putting us on life support, isn’t going to do the job. We have to address the underlying issues. I'm voting 'no' today. I'm urging every one whether they vote 'yes' or vote 'no' to work with me to address some of the underlying causes of the problems that we 10000071.docx 53  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 have. The underlying cost drivers. Otherwise we’ll be right back where we are."

"The next time we get here, there may not be enough field dressings to fix this problem. Thank you."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. I've sat here and listened to several speeches and all of them are very good. And I was sitting here thinking about exactly what I wanted to say, and one of the ideas is that you need to vote your district. And I thought about my district with a university, two junior colleges, a prison, and multiple social services that are in need. And I have a couple of interstates that have some other issues within things, where the rest areas aren’t being paid by… to the cities and those vendors. But also I'm sitting here thinking that you know, I'm one of those people in my particular district. I'm stuck between, you know, which is going to hurt worst, if I take a hammer and hit my left hand or my right hand. And the fact is, no matter which way I go, it's going to hurt the same. But also remember the very first day that I was told… I mean… I got accepted into Lakeland College. Now for you folks, some of you folks, that’s not a big deal. But for me, poor boy from Arthur, that was a big deal because my folks couldn’t send me and we applied for what was then, the Illinois State Scholarship. And that was great, the Illinois State Scholarship, which probably what you folks might here called the MAP grant. And this is very important 'cause I wouldn’t be sitting here. So, I am thankful for the State of Illinois 10000071.docx 54  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 for what they gave me. I was then able to go on to Eastern Illinois University. That may not be a big deal for a lot of you, but for me, it was a big deal. Now on the Wall Street Journal it says right here, in Charleston, where the university is based, empty store fronts litter Lincoln Avenue. I own some of those. And the main thrill for everybody, my campus is closing. And the for rent signs are all up and down Charleston, Illinois. So, I understand my conservative folks on this side. I agree with them 'cause also at the same time, I run a business. We're close to a thousand employees, and we're very proud of that. But I got my start from that MAP grant. And I'm really… what you'd call a MAP grant… and so I'm excited and happy to stand here in some ways to say, I'd like to save my university, I'd like to save my town. And so, although it's against some of the principles that I came here for, I am going to vote for this Bill. I've voted for the Amendments, and I will vote for this Bill. It's not the best Bill, but it’s the Bill that we've got at hand. And if it saves my school, I'm going to be for it. Thank you."

"Thank you, Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield for a couple questions?"

"I was hoping the questions would be answered already, but it seems that nobody has too many to ask. So, I apologize. Friday, from my understanding, the negotiations were going strong and were going really well. Would you agree with that?" Harris, G.: "We went through many negotiating sessions; we had give and take. There were several hundred millions of dollars of reductions and asks from the Republican Caucuses that the Democratic Caucuses agreed to incorporate into this plan. So, yes, I think we had gone very well." 10000071.docx 57  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017

"Okay. And can you explain what happened then to stop those negotiations after that? I mean, I think you guys were negotiating throughout almost 14 hours on Fri… what happened to stop the negotiations? Because, personally I trust that the ones chosen on both sides of the aisle to negotiate a comprehensive revenue plan. So…" Harris, G.: "Representative, we went through the entire plan several times. The questions that were raised were answered. A sheet of requests was given to us several times. We went through three iterations, each time the Democrats agreed with certain things the Republicans wanted, as these negotiations go. And at the end we reached the limit where the requests were beyond what we were willing to accept. Also, as negotiations go."

"Okay. So there was no… this wasn’t negotiated then. There was things that were… that you folks discussed as a whole that were not in this plan." Harris, G.: "Five hundred million dollar cut to Medicaid, there were many things that the Democrats would not agree to, that are not in this plan. And the things that we want also, were cut out of this plan. So, when you say, oh, something Republicans wanted are not here, things that we wanted are not in there also. That’s the nature of how these things go."

"Absolutely." Harris, G.: "I would love to have kept money in for the universities in this state. I would have loved to have kept the level the Democrats wanted, but that’s not the way it turned out." 10000071.docx 58  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017

"If this Bill is passed today, will SB6 be called today?" Harris, G.: "We'll take a look at the Roll Call; we'll see if this Bill passes."

"Okay. And let's… let's say that it does. I would think that the next Bill needed to pass, otherwise we're going to go to junk status, because you can't have one or the other without the other piece. So, would you say it's fair then if this favorably passes, we will go ahead and call that next Bill?" Harris, G.: "At some point we are going to have to call the expense side. We've already voted on it, and we will have to complete that work before we leave here."

"Okay. And if this is indeed passed, will negotiations continue on SB1?" Harris, G.: "I believe that's a discussion ongoing between the Leaders. That’s a Leader level discussion."

"Okay. And will negotiations continue on reforms, structural reforms?" Harris, G.: "I know that they're ongoing discussions in the workers' comp, property tax, local government consolidation areas, and there might… which one am I forgetting? Oh, and also, I'm sorry."

"Pensions." Harris, G.: "Also the pension area that are ongoing and there are some issues that have been raised at the Leader level."

"Okay. Well, it'd be hope, and I think everybody in here, that those continue and we can get a resolution hopefully by the end of the month on those items as well." 10000071.docx 59  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 Harris, G.: "And Representative, let me just answer that. I think on our side of the aisle there is definitely an interest to come to a conclusion on those that we can all live with."

"I appreciate that. And if this is passed, several people have talked about how bad it's gotten, and it obviously has, is this something that we can… we can collectively quit bringing forth new programs, enhancements of programs, unfunded mandates on our schools, and additional regulations on our businesses. Can we as a Body, just stop for a while with all of that?" Harris, G.: "Representative, I can tell you that in the proposal the House Democrats and the Senate Democrats began working on is what might be our position. There were a number of new proposals suggested. Several hundred million dollars of new proposals. If you were to look in Senate Bill 6, as amended in the House, you would not find those. Our guiding principle was, we are taking out new programs because we have to be sure we can pay for the existing ones and at a rate that can sustain themselves. And I'll give you an example of that. The mental health community is struggling under, you know, the stress of the budget impasse, and also low Medicaid reimbursement rates. So, in some cases we did propose increasing rates for organizations like mental health, substance abuse, opioid treatment, so that they can hire the medical professionals they need. So you might see some of those things in there, but there are no new programs."

"Okay. Well I just got… just for closing real quick. Speaker, if you don’t mind. I'm not going to judge or disrespect anybody that votes for or against this Bill, that’s 10000071.docx 60  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 not my place here, but I… I'm disappointed that the negotiations did not continue, and I don’t feel it is a true comprehensive plan. So, unfortunately, I will not be able to support this. Thank you."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to talk about reforms. Not the ones we've been voting on in the last couple of days, but honest to goodness reform of our revenue system in this 10000071.docx 62  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 state. Thirty years or so in the business, I think I can speak on it and the fact that I have dealt with the tax laws of probably 30 states. And I've seen how states deal with revenue, how they raise it, how they balance their books and things like that. Illinois's tax structure was devised at a time when Illinois was a manufacturing powerhouse. We still have great manufacturing in this state, but not nearly like we did because when I grew up in Kankakee, I could have gotten out of high school and gotten a job in any number of factories, and had a very good life: Borden, A.O. Smith, Roper Stoves, Swift Armour. Those are gone now, and so is the way that we… and… and our tax system, however; still reflects what it was like back in the 70s. We need reform; we need tax reform: who we tax, how we tax, when we tax, where we tax. It doesn’t come through a tax increase. This is not reform; this is a tax increase. And unfortunately, I believe that given the fact that we've sat in these… I've sat in committees for all these months, listening to people come and tell me that without my program or that program, there will be no… there will be no… what's going to happen to my constituency. There will be no speed bump between drop outs and a jail cell. We need to change the way we tax income in this state, and we also need to change the way we tax property in this state. I've been giving examples over the past couple of days about how much the Speaker's taxes are in Chicago, $4,600 on a house that's worth $294 thousand. We had one Representative stand up today and scoff at property tax relief. Well, do you know that Mr… the Speaker's tax bill in Champaign, Illinois, on a house of $294 thousand would be almost $7,200. The Lady from 10000071.docx 63  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 the 84th District got up and talked about property taxes. Well do you know that the Speaker's taxes of $4,600 in Chicago would be $9,200 in Aurora. We need reform. We need tax reform… property tax reform. And the thing I'm afraid of is that in spite of what we do today, yes, we do need to balance a budget, and I'm afraid that this is the way we're going to end up doing it, we need reform. And there… and I listen to my friend from Arlington Heights and Peoria and Murphysboro, and Charleston, and I don’t have any argument against what they said because what they said is true. We need this. But unfortunately, in the six months that I've been here, I have seen a fundamental unseriousness in this Body toward how we spend other people's money. And until the day comes that we can find it within ourselves to stand up and just do the right thing with spending, I can't support this Bill. I know something about being at rock bottom too. Back in May of 2008, I lost a business, I lost my home, and I had a stroke, all in the same month. I spent two weeks at the University of Missouri Hospital learning how to walk again, or wondering if I would even walk again. I was terrified. My wife was terrified. But I got out of that bed, I put one foot in front of the other and I learned to walk again. I walked out of that hospital, I walked into this room, and I'm standing before you right now. You know, J.K Rowling's said… no stranger to hard times… she said that she let rock bottom be the foundation upon which she rebuilt her life. That has been an inspiration to me ever since I walked out of that hospital. We are at rock bottom, we're going to go to junk. We're at rock bottom. But you know something, we can make rock bottom 10000071.docx 64  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 be the foundation of bringing this state back. But it's not going to be done with a tax increase. And it's not going to be done with playing games with spending. It's going to be done with true honest to God reform. Please vote 'no' on this Bill. And let's get the job done. Thank you."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?"

"Thank you, Representative, for that introduction. There are just a few questions I have to the details of the Bill. First, would it be true to say that Senate Bill 6 currently relies, in order to balance and make everything work, currently relies on a certain amount of pension savings from changes that have not yet been enacted in law? Is that correct?" Harris, G.: "That is correct."

"Maybe in the neighborhood of $500 million?" Harris, G.: "When the Republican negotiators brought those numbers to us, that was the number that was ascribed to it. And we adopted that number."

"So, that $500 million mark is contingent upon the Bill that has passed this chamber, but not yet been signed by the Governor. It's contingent that would be signed by the Governor?" Harris, G.: "Yes, Sir."

"The Bill also, that we're talking about here, also relies on I believe $300 million in revenue from the sale of the James R. Thompson Center. Is that correct?" Harris, G.: "Yes, Sir."

"So, that's contingent on a couple of things. First, that the Bill authorizing the sale of the Thompson Center be signed 10000071.docx 72  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 into law and that the sale actually happen and be finalized in this fiscal year, correct?" Harris, G.: "That would be correct."

"Okay. So, there… between those two items, we… we have 300 million… or $800 million that is contingent on other pieces of legislation becoming law that have not yet been enacted and certain transactions having taken place in this year. Another issue that I think is noted…" Harris, G.: "Representative?"

"…should be noted. Yes?" Harris, G.: "Can I… can I just respond that the reason we have those items in our budget, these were also items that the House and Senate Republicans had adopted in the budget that they presented so our budgets would be identical in accepting those proposals."

"And I appreciate that. You know, I don't think that the ideas lack merit. I'd note that when we introduced those, it was in the spirit of a bipartisan agreement and compromise an…" Harris, G.: "And I would just note the similarity."

"Sure. The next thing I want to note… 'cause you mentioned that this proposal, under your description, would spend less money than the Governor's introduced budget. But isn't it true that one of the reasons you've been able to achieve that is that you've made a change in the way that LGDF and transit funds are direct deposited; therefore, lowering the GRF total which is… was also a part of the Governor's proposal. So, if you took that out on your end, shouldn't you also take that out on the Governor's side?" 10000071.docx 73  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 Harris, G.: "We could look at that, and I thank you for the idea of doing that because that was another one of the ideas from your proposal, which we were very happy to adopt."

"I appreciate it. I think it's just important that we have an apples to apples comparison of what the total GRF spend is. And then this proposal, that's before us, that the direct deposit of LGDF and transit funds has lowered the GRF appropriation even though you're not maybe making that same adjustment on the Governor's side. The last thing I want to ask about, and I think that this is one of the most important things, certainly as we were able to negotiate, we made clear that one of the most important things to our Caucus is paying down the backlog of old bills. And I know that we… we may have a 'bimp' filed, maybe today, maybe on another day, we haven't seen that language yet. So how does this proposal allow for the repayment of old bills?" Harris, G.: "Representative, as you know, in the discussions we had talked about several items that would generate a surplus. With the items in this budget, there is a surplus indicated at the bottom. That could go to the payment of the old bills in whatever way would be the most efficient way for us to do it. And we would rely on GAMBI and the Comptroller's Office to help us decide how to use that money most effectively. If you remember, there was another item that was agreed in the working group, that we believed added to the amount of surplus in our budget, could have by itself, been a revenue stream to fund $6 billion worth of borrowing. That item was subsequently I understand, and you and I discussed this last night, was 10000071.docx 74  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 withdrawn. So now we would have to find another revenue source to fill that gap."

"And that will likely be… that language would likely be part of a 'bimp' that we'll see some time after the last vote and this vote are concluded?" Harris, G.: "Yes. The 'bimp' would have to be filed and voted on."

"Okay. Thank you, Representative. Mr. Speaker, to the Bill in my remaining time I have left. I think it's just important that we understand, you know, we've taken a momentous vote already today. Again, this is a very important vote. This is the appropriation for this entire fiscal year. It relies on several contingencies and assumptions that maybe aren't all the way completed yet. And so, you know, before we get ahead of ourselves and say that we've achieved a balanced budget, that we've achieved the kinds of financial changes we need to make sure the state is…"

"Thank you. To make sure the state continues to operate in a financially responsible way, there are still several other pieces of the puzzle that have to come together. That was the position of House Republicans all through this negotiation is that we need to consider the big picture. We need to look for how all of these things can work together. We need to enact the meaningful reforms that we think will put the state back on the right path. By doing these in an individual piecemeal process, and by setting aside those key crucial components we're building a budget today on 10000071.docx 75  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 contingencies. and I don't believe that's a responsible course to take. Thank you."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?"

"So, I had just a few questions because I've been here since 2013 and the very first Bill that we voted on, really for floor action in 2013…" Harris, G.: "Just a minute, Representative. Mr. Speaker, I'm having a hard time hearing the Lady."

"Thank you. So, when I showed up in 2013, one of the first Bills we voted on was the Supplemental Spending Plan same thing with 2014, same thing with 2015. And I'm a little bit concerned that when this… this Bill has just been dropped at about 2:00 today, 2:30, and nobody has had time to really vet it. And I'm hearing from Leaders, in my side's staff leaders, that essentially… that perhaps there's $2.7 billion that won't be taken care of that may need a supplemental appropriation. Could you speak to that or do you know anything about that?" Harris, G.: "I've never been approached by your staff or shown any document about it. I'm not sure how I would respond."

"Well, I believe it's bills that are sitting at agencies that can't be moved forward, and that they're going to be out those…" Harris, G.: "Ah, okay."

"…that information." Harris, G.: "So, I just wanted to be sure I explained this correctly. I consulted with our budget director. There are 10000071.docx 76  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 not specific appropriations for those costs in our legislation; however, there is a language… there is language that would allow agencies to use the current appropriations for prior year costs which would include FY17 at this point."

"Well, then… how does that… what's the balance then on the budget? We just did the spend. What's the balance on the budget if you're going to include those? Were those included in your revenue that you just passed? Was that money included?" Harris, G.: "Representative, those would be past appropriations. They go to the Comptroller's Office where it becomes the question then of available cash, which is why we're so urgently looking for ways to do borrowing or other mechanisms to pay the backlog of old bills."

"Okay. So, even the revenue Bill that we just passed, your revenue Bill, didn't deal with anything for back bills. And your budget right now, as far as we can tell, doesn’t deal with back bills at all. Is that correct?" Harris, G.: "The amount that is the balance, at the end of our plan, Representative, which is… just want to be sure I'm giving you the right number. We have a lot of charts, as I'm sure you do. Would be…"

"Well, okay my…" Harris, G.: "Here I have it. I'm going to read it."

"Okay, you got it? Okay, what's your total number there?" Harris, G.: "Three hundred and fifty-five million."

"Three hundred and fifty-five million for what?" Harris, G.: "Surplus."

"Your… your surplus. You have a surplus here?" 10000071.docx 77  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 Harris, G.: "Yes, Ma'am."

"And… but… but still in your budget, as far as we can tell, there's nothing in there for back bills. Are you dealing with that separately?" Harris, G.: "Back bills go to the Comptroller and those become a cash flow issue, which is the object of the borrowing in Senate Bill 42. And as we discussed…"

"Okay, so there's another Bill that's going to deal with back bills and borrowing, is that correct?" Harris, G.: "There are numerous strategies that the negotiators; Mr. Demmer, Miss Bellock and myself, along with the Senate, Republicans and Democrats talked about taking some of the ideas from the Republican plan, which we all found to be very advantageous as far as the flexibility for interfund borrowing and some sweeps. A bond issue to pay down the indebtedness on the backlog of bills which are accruing 12 percent interest and using…"

"Okay." Harris, G.: "…the balance from this year's budget surplus to…"

"Well…" Harris, G.: "…as a portion of the debt service."

"…listen, I appreciate your attempt to explain this to the public in this… in this open debate. But the truth is it's hard to explain a 638-page Bill that just got dropped about two hours, well, what is it, four hours ago? I've lost track of time. I mean, I don't think anybody can explain that. And like I said before, the first three years where we were dealing with budgets, every single year we came back. The first thing that we did was the supplemental because the 10000071.docx 78  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 budget wasn't done right. Something had been missed. And to just go ahead and vote on this, when people don't know what's actually in it, I think is a problem. And so I would just say, you know, this is not a finished product. And we should vote 'no'."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Will the Sponsor yield?"

"So, Greg, just to clarify. Is the spending balanced with the revenue Bill that we just passed?" 10000071.docx 79  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 Harris, G.: "The spending is balanced and it provides a $355 million surplus."

"So, looking specifically at some of the educational items here. Is the MAP grant funded for both 2017 and 2018?" Harris, G.: "Yes."

"And looking at Performance Funding grant that's included in here. What is that for?" Harris, G.: "Okay, thank you. This is a community college grant based on their performance that are incentive payments for those community colleges who produce superior results."

"So there's funding there. So, we had already talked earlier about universities being cut back 10 percent from 2015 level. Is that correct?" Harris, G.: "That is correct."

"Looking at the pension issues, are they fully funded in this spending Bill?" Harris, G.: "Yes."

"What about group health?" Harris, G.: "It is fully funded for 2018. And also, we give appropriation authority so that the back bills can go to the Comptroller and be part of a settlement of… the backlog of bills, when that comes about."

"So, a lot of universities and other state agencies have need for the capital to be reappropriated. Is that reappropriated in this Bill?" Harris, G.: "There are… some are some are not. Like most of the capital reappropriations we've done, there are categorical ones for different categories, like libraries, water projects, et cetera, where a line is given and then… projects 10000071.docx 80  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 are paid by the department. There are also some that are separately named. So, there's a variety of ways they appear in the Bill. So some universities are in, others are not. They will be added as, you know, revenue and funds become available."

"We've spent a lot of time talking about a new school funding reform Bill for K-12 schools. Is that fully funded in this Bill?" Harris, G.: "We've provided $350 million in additional funding, which would fund the evidence-based model."

"And what about early childhood? We have a federal agreement that we're supposed to be putting 5… $50 million more each year." Harris, G.: "We have provided the money for FY18 to meet our maintenance of that for requirements."

"Transportation is always a big issue. What have you done with that in this Bill?" Harris, G.: "For the mandated categorical regular transportation, we have made a substantial increase that would bring the proration above 80 percent."

"So, you've funded some of these obligations. You've looked at some of the issues we have. It seems that, with a balanced budget, we can move forward and start working on unpaid bills. How is that covered in this Bill?" Harris, G.: "I'm sorry. I did not hear."

"Unpaid bills." Harris, G.: "We've provided in this Bill for a surplus that can go toward the combined effort to bond out our backlog of debt that is eligible for prompt-pay interest. We're also… have 10000071.docx 81  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 been meeting with Members of your caucus, the other chamber, the Comptroller and the Governor's Office of Management and Budget about the best strategies to put forth for a comprehensive bill payment plan."

"So, I think that's one of the big issues that we have. That I think that if we're looking at increased taxes, citizens want to know that we're using the money responsibly and that we are paying down those bills. Cutting some of that 9-12 percent interest that we're paying, that adds something like $800 million to the state funding each year. So, I compliment the work that you've done on this. The fact that there are some loose ends that you're continuing to work on. And we look forward to getting our state back on track."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the Bill. To the honorable Members of the House, Ladies and Gentlemen, as I want to talk about compromise. To pass a budget, we need compromise. Both Republicans and Democrats have to work together and vote together to get to 71 votes. So let's talk about compromise and the color that represents. We talk about purple. Lot's of talk about purple. A lot of people on this floor are wearing purple today. I'm wearing a purple tie and I'm wearing a purple pocket square. Many others are doing the same thing. Working… being purple means that red and blue work together. Well, today at 1:30, SB9, the tax hike, an Amendment was dropped on us, nearly 600 pages long. That wasn't purple, people. Today, at 2:15, this Bill, the budget, was dropped. That wasn't purple. So, in the last few hours, 1,211 pages of new proposals have been dropped off. Gentlemen, Ladies, 10000071.docx 82  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017 that's not purple. And to fix Illinois's problems, we need to work together. Now, the Gentleman from Burr Ridge told me, a few days ago, that both sides are working together. The negotiation was going well. That sounded purple. And it disappoints me that I put this tie on thinking that we could work together. I put this pocket square in, that my wife sewed for me, thinking that we could work together. And I was betrayed. Today, we have gone back from the negotiation and we have dropped this. So, I'm going to ask for a 'no' vote. And I'm going to say, let's get back to work."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Point of personal privilege." 10000071.docx 84  STATE OF ILLINOIS 100th GENERAL ASSEMBLY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES TRANSCRIPTION DEBATE 71st Legislative Day 7/2/2017

"I, too, would like to wish my seatmate, Representative Mike Unes a very happy birthday today."