And now we continue our look at Bruce Rauner’s first 100 days in office as Illinois governor. We wanted to better understand the politicians’ playbook when it comes to negotiations. It comes as leaders in the Statehouse are starting to turn their attention on spending more than 30 billion dollars next year. IPR’s Tony Arnold takes this look at the politics of negotiating a budget.
Governor Bruce Rauner has proposed big cuts for next year. Senate Democrats held hearings about how those cuts could affect, say, disabled citizens who rely on state aid for services.
So - picture a hearing room that’s packed full of people who have physical handicaps, parents who rely on daycare, and the people who run agencies helping them. Democrats might’ve seen the cuts as the state government being heartless by reducing services to the people in the room.
But Republican State Senator Matt Murphy saw it as part of negotiations and took the hearing to mean something else entirely. His comments caused an uneasy shift in the tone among the crowd.
MURPHY: "To be perfectly clear so everybody in this room understands why this problem hasn’t been solved yet is because the Senate Democratic caucus wants to leverage this issue and push this debt into next year and they’re using you as political pawns in the process."
STEANS: "Senator Murphy, please move ahead."
MURPHY: "I mean, somebody’s got to speak the truth in this room."
That was Democratic Senator Heather Steans telling Murphy to move along in his comments. Now, maybe you see the Democrats who are in the majority as protectors of government services. Or, maybe you agree that they are cynically using people for their own political priorities. Or some combination of the two.
Former Governor Rod Blagojevich used to make the case for his budget priorities by often talking about “no growth” budgets, or cuts to programs for children. And Republicans often opposed Democratic budgets, saying spending was out of control.
The point is, budget negotiations may be seen as a game of chess. But they have very real consequences. But this year there’s a new entity in the room, and some of those tried-and-true tactics are shifting.
"They’re still feeling each other out."
That’s Tom Cross. Until recently, he was the top Republican in the House. And he was in the room to negotiate budgets with the Democrats who had majority control of state government. Cross says there’s going to be posturing and leveraging in any negotiation. But for now, people are just trying to figure out Governor Rauner, who’s an unknown entity as a first-time office-holder.
"I guess you’d say they’ve probably gotten to know each other. Now they’re venturing a new road and trying to balance a budget with limited resources."
Another former House Republican is Lee Daniels. He served in the 90s when Republicans were in the majority. And he says even when negotiating a spending plan with members of his own party, there was still drama.
"We all fought like cats and dogs as we should in a democracy in the legislative process. But at the end of the day, the people that I worked with when I was there, we understood that we had to come together in the end, we had to balance the budget."
Daniels makes the point that even after negotiating the budget with the governor and the Democrats, his job wasn’t done. He then had to go sell the plan to his own fellow Republicans. And if they weren’t on board, he’d have to negotiate with them to get enough votes to pass the whole thing.
Charlie Wheeler is a longtime Statehouse observer and political science professor. He says putting the necessary votes on a negotiated budget can tricky, because leaders want to remain in power. And the way they keep that power, is by protecting members of their own party, who may get asked to vote for unpopular ideas. So those who won’t have serious opponents vote yes. And those who typically have hard-fought elections don’t have to.
"It may sound cynical but I think it’s reality. Particularly in this day and age when we have such polarized campaigns."
So after all that, this annual exercise that could hold up almost everything else your representatives in Springfield do, what’s the new governor, the guy everyone is trying to figure out, think about negotiating a budget?
"It ain’t that hard to balance the budget." Rauner says he’s not focused on negotiating the budget just yet because he says it’s rather easy. Instead he’s first going after something he says is more difficult. Rauner calls it making structural changes to government. Eliminating conflicts of interest.
But unions have another name for it. Union-busting. So how is Rauner doing on that front? We’ll have more on that next week as we continue to look at Governor Rauner’s first 100 days in office.