Lake County Gazette

Republican state House candidate Dan Yost is struggling to understand how Democrats can justify the new $42 billion spending plan just signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

“The new budget is once again unbalanced,” Yost said. “The governor has exceeded the state’s income by around $6 billion. Democrats also secured an $1,800 pay raise for themselves, 30% of worker’s taxes are filling a bloated pension-system, and another $5 billion ‘bailout’ for the Pritzker administration. This is an insult to the average Illinois taxpayer.”

In all, the plan Democrats used a recent four-day special session to ram through and send to Pritzker’s desk increases the budget by 8% over last year at a time when revenues are certain to be short of what they’ve been in the past because of the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.

As constituted, the plan authorizes borrowing up to $5 billion from a federal government in addition to all the funds state officials are already counting on to be coming from Washington.

Running against incumbent state Rep. Joyce Mason (D-Gurnee) in the 61st District, Yost has grown more vocal in his recent criticisms of the Pritzker administration, including the governor’s handling of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“I believe that the governor has overstepped his authority,” Yost told the Lake County Gazette, adding that he thinks lawmakers like Mason have only served as a rubber stamp for Pritzker and House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago).

"Whether they meet or not, the legislators' silence is the same as their approval of his actions,” he said. “The unchecked power he wielded was a direct result of the legislators’ abdication of their duty as a co-equal branch of government.”

Yost, an Antioch resident, argues small businesses across the state have been forced to pay a heavy price for all the incompetence.

“Small businesses are being destroyed each and every day, and with each small business that disappears, more jobs slip away into oblivion,” he said. "I don’t just worry about small businesses surviving in Illinois, I worry about families surviving in Illinois.”