State Representative Martin McLaughlin and several of his House Republican colleagues have given Governor Pritzker’s state budget proposal the “DOGE” treatment, reviewing the proposal line item by line item to cut spending that is wasteful, or an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.
“Like the federal government, the State of Illinois doesn’t have a revenue problem, we have a priorities problem,” said McLaughlin (R-Barrington Hills). My colleagues and I have gone through the buglet line by line and crafted a plan to get those priorities back on track.”
Earlier this year, Governor Pritzker proposed a FY 2026 budget of $55 billion, the largest budget proposal in state history. Rep McLaughlin stressed that billions of taxpayer dollars could be saved by simply eliminating funding for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and returning the budget to where it was two years ago.
“Too many NGOs are getting taxpayer dollars that should instead be funding services our families and seniors truly need,” Rep. McLaughlin said. “Worse, we have absolutely no oversight authority over NGOs, so we have no say in how they spend our money. They’re not even subject to Freedom of Information requests.”
“Often taxpayer funding for a single NGO is spread out over five or six line items in separate sections of the Democrats’ 3,000 + page budget. Each may not seem that large, but when you track them all down and add them together it’s a lot of money that can be put to better use elsewhere,” McLaughlin added.
“The bottom line is this: Since Governor Pritzker took office families and businesses have been fleeing our state, yet budget spending and taxes have continued to increase year after year. Illinoisans are paying more money for fewer and fewer actual state services. Everyone in the General Assembly needs to take a hard, thorough look at where our taxpayer dollars are actually going – and we must get our spending priorities back on track.,” Rep. McLaughlin said.