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There is no shortage of goofiness at the Illinois
Statehouse these days. Some players are goofier than others, but Gov. Rod
Blagojevich usually gets most of the coverage. Blagojevich has the top job, so he naturally gets the
attention, and many of the things he’s done this year certainly
qualify as goofiness, from his silly lawsuits against the House speaker to
his truly gigantic tax-hike proposals, his numerous false claims about his
accomplishments, and . . . well, you read the papers, so you know the story
all too well. The point is, Blagojevich is definitely not alone. For instance, it’s no secret that Republican
state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington wants to run for governor in 2010. He
ran for governor last year and lost the GOP primary, and ever since
he’s attempted to set himself up as Blagojevich’s top
Republican critic. Brady is a popular, well-liked legislator, but he has
had his own goofy moments this year. During debate on the state budget bill last summer,
Brady said he hoped that the governor would veto the bill — then, a
few minutes later, voted for the very bill that he said he wanted
Blagojevich to kill. That’s not all. After Blagojevich did actually
veto part of the budget bill, Brady began agitating to have the General
Assembly override those vetoes. Now, it’s not as simple and clear-cut as it
looks — the governor’s vetoes were blatantly political and in
many cases harmful and hypocritical — but Brady has jumped around
more on this thing than an espresso-chugging frog. Sen. Chris Lauzen, R-Aurora, like Brady, is trying to
move up the political ladder with a run for Congress. Lauzen voted against
the budget bill when it came up last summer, but last week he was calling
for a veto override. If that doesn’t make sense to you, you’re
not alone.
The House Republicans have been hemming and hawing for
months about how to pay for what’s known in Springfield as the
capital bill. What we’re talking about here are construction and
repair projects on things such as roads, bridges, and schools. The House GOP leaders say they’re for the
multibillion-dollar capital program favored by Blagojevich and claim that
they can support more gambling to pay for the projects, but they’ve
refused to actually climb on board a single gaming proposal in months, even
though the Senate Democrats, the Senate Republicans, and the governor have
all endorsed a specific proposal. Instead, they appear to be waiting for
Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan to come up with something. Lots of
courage there.
Then there’s Madigan. The House’s Яber-leader was
infuriated when Senate President Emil Jones broke his word and refused to
allow a Senate vote to override the governor’s budget vetoes. Jones
had promised to support the budget right down the line, no matter what, but
Jones blamed Madigan for interfering with his chamber’s attempt to
pass a completely separate bill for an earlier capital plan and used that
as an excuse to back away from his budget agreement.
Last week, Madigan used Jones’ actions as an
excuse to refuse to pass two bills that were part of that overall budget
agreement. Without those bills, schools won’t receive hundreds of
millions of dollars in aid this year, the Illinois State Police and
secretary of state may run out of cash for operations in January, and
not-for-profit agencies that care for the developmentally disabled
won’t receive a crucial injection of state funds. But hey —
what’s so wrong with threatening widespread misery when there’s
a political fight at hand?
Still, though, nothing quite says “goofy”
quite like Rod Blagojevich. A couple of weeks ago, Blagojevich announced that he
was using some of the money he vetoed from the budget to pay for free
mammograms for Illinois women. The money really wasn’t coming from
the vetoes, as I told you earlier, and there is already a lot of money for
mammograms in the state budget. What I didn’t tell you before was that
Blagojevich actually vetoed a $40,000 appropriation to a group called
Sisters Embracing Life. The money was supposed to be used to provide breast
exams for minority women. Perfect.
Rich Miller publishes Capitol
Fax, a daily political newsletter. He can be
reached at capitolfax.blogspot.com.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2007.
