Sound Off Now to Help End the Illinois Budget Impasse

Listen up, please. Your vote last week was important.

Still, whether you're miserable about the national outcome or elated, there's more work to do here at home.

Act up locally if you really want to take back ownership of your governments.

There's a small window of opportunity now. Lawmakers are meeting in Springfield for the next few days. They're scheduled to meet for three more after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Now is the time for us to demand an end to the Illinois budget impasse. Now is the time to apply some pressure.

If enough of us act and tell lawmakers to act, we might succeed. If we don't try, we surely will fail.

If you think the budget impasse doesn't affect you, you're factually wrong. Every day that goes by without a state budget means another day of rising debt that all Illinoisans will pay for at some point in the future. The state owes people who have done work for it more than $9.4 billion. We have the nation's worst pension debt. Between the two, if the bills all came do and the collector came to the door, every taxpayer would have to fork over $45,500, according to the nonpartisan Truth in Accounting.

Can you afford not to act?

We are the only state without a budget. Every day Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan and GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner and Illinois Senate President John Cullerton and Illinois Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno and Illinois House Republican Leader Jim Durkin go without a budget agreement is another day of increasing debt, decreasing credit ratings and another day that makes it tougher for hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans to survive.

Back in June, the United Way of Illinois completed a survey that showed nearly one million Illinoisans lost services because of the budget impasse. A group calling itself the Responsible Budget Coalition said of that figure recently: "That means that one out of every 13 men, women, and children in this state has been denied mental health services, substance abuse treatment, child care, senior care, HIV prevention, even food programs. And that number doesn’t include the thousands who have lost their jobs because long-established agencies have been forced to close their doors."

State workers have been paid for the past 16 months. Children are going to school. But make no mistake. Future generations are at risk because of the refusal to compromise and act by politicians who are supposed to be providing public service not political gain for themselves and their party members.

Our university and college and community college officials say they are at a tipping point. That means we are chasing away our children who can afford to be educated out of state and we're destroying a chance at a better future for our children who cannot afford an out-of-state education. We're destroying entire communities that build up around those colleges. We're destroying small businesses and the work and lifelines and families they support.

We're hurting children and our senior citizen parents and those with physical and mental disabilities who rely on funding from the state for things like early childhood education and Meals on Wheels and the support of counselors who know their patients and clients and care.

We've also been hearing from some of you that your doctors are demanding payments up front because they're tired of being shafted by the state of Illinois for providing medical care.

Tuesday, Madigan emerged from a meeting with Rauner and the other leaders and said he was appointing a "working group" to come up with another six-month stopgap spending plan. Republicans emerged and said that wasn't what they thought they'd agreed on. That working groups finished their work long ago. The leaders will meet again Wednesday.

For the first time in a long time, the pressure seems to be building on Madigan and it's showing. We've seen at least one Chicago Democrat suggest that Madigan and the others need to find an adult to join them in the negotiating room to call an end to the games. Others are said to be frustrated as well.

The pressure's got to build from the core. We are the core. The citizens who must demand better. This is where we can try to make a positive difference. We all know a resolution to the impasse and all of this pension and overdue debt will take both cuts and efficiencies, as well as some tax increases. Taxes will rise more the longer we delay.

Take five minutes, at most, right now. In four mouse clicks using the Reboot Illinois Sound Off tool below, you can tell Rauner, Madigan and the other top legislative leaders, along with your individual representative and senator, to end the impasse.

We've even written an email for you, but we encourage you to revise and personalize it for the greatest impact on your representatives. Follow that up with a phone call or a visit to your lawmakers offices. And keep sending those emails and making those phone calls. Pressure from all of us will build upon our local lawmakers who will pressure those leaders.

If enough of us try, we might succeed and start ourselves back on a path to recovery. If we don't try, we fail. And surely, more friends and family members will be hurt.

Our families, our friends, our homes are worth it. Click here to Sound Off now. Let's end the Illinois budget impasse.