Lake County Gazette

Republican state Rep. Chris Bos is urging taxpaying voters to take a stand against what he views as Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s reckless spending spree.

“The Governor’s Office of Management and Budget (GOMB) recently painted a rosy picture of Illinois’ fiscal health but neglected to mention that the administration used $4.8 billion in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for pet projects instead of paying down the deficit on the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, which inches closer to $5 billion every day,” Bos posted on Facebook. “That means the interest on the trust fund deficit, owed to the federal government, is growing at $300,000 a day and will have to be paid back from the state’s general revenue fund (i.e. your state tax dollars).”

Bos is now asking residents to add their signatures to a petition calling on the governor to “stop the ARPA spending spree because job creators and workers can’t afford another tax increase to fund pet projects.”

In an effort to meet the surge of unemployment claims at the height of the COVID-19 shutdown, the state borrowed billions from the federal government to cover the excess.    

With the state’s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund now as much as $8 billion underwater, according to Illinois Policy, Illinois business leaders are concerned that Springfield has now twice passed a state budget that neither time addresses the issue. At the time of debate, legislators pushed to reallocate a portion of the $8.1 billion in ARPA funds to fill the deficit in the state’s 2022 state budget.

During the month of May alone, Illinois lost 7,900 jobs, at the time leaving the state’s unemployment rate at a staggering 7.1 percent, far outpacing the national average of 5.8 percent