Kankakee Times

While the Democrats see the passage of Senate Bill 2803 as a win to pay down debts, their Republican colleagues think it could have gone further to tackle a specific debt, which they see causing issues for years to come: the unemployment trust fund deficit, which now runs somewhere around $5 billion.

"Last year we were calling on Democrats to fully fund the unemployment insurance trust fund when the state still had more than enough federal money on hand to do just that. Instead, Gov. Pritzker and his legislative allies decided to squander most of it on pork projects, and to kick the can further down the road for unemployment," Sen. Jason Barickman (R-Bloomington) said. "That was a missed opportunity to provide the state with some much-needed fiscal sanity and responsibility. Now the costly penalty for their reckless spending will be paid by employers, workers, or anyone who ends up on unemployment."

Senate Bill 2803 moves funds from "the General Revenue Fund to the Office of the Governor for its FY 22 ordinary and contingent expenses," according to Legiscan.

Senate Bill 2803 appropriates $2.7 billion to the Illinois Unemployment Insurance (UI) Trust Fund; it also allocates money to pay off old group health insurance bills, the College Illinois program, and millions in extra pension payments, according to a press release from the Illinois Senate Democrats. "I’m disappointed that Republicans are putting their politics ahead of fiscal responsibility while Democrats in the General Assembly are taking the lead to put our fiscal house in order,” Pritzker said in a statement, according to WCBU.