The Illinois legislature has three weeks until its self-imposed deadline to put together a budget.
One person with a big part of that job is House Majority Leader Greg Harris, who says there’s a multi billion dollar shortage in the unemployment insurance trust fund.
“There are a number of solutions being discussed, including use of that ARPA money, and also potentially bonding out a portion of that debt,” Harris told reporters Thursday. “That’s a strategy that was used a couple of decades ago, during the Great Recession, when t/he state of Illinois and other states also ended up with trust fund deficits.”
A big wrinkle, says Harris, is – who expected the Russia-Ukraine situation and its worldwide economic effects?