SPRINGFIELD – Senator Don Harmon, an Oak Park Democrat and president pro tempore of the Illinois Senate, issued the following statement today reacting to the governor’s budget address to the General Assembly:

“I am alarmed that Gov. Rauner was no more prepared today to propose a balanced budget to the General Assembly than he was on this day in 2016 or in 2015.

“For nearly 200 years Illinois governors considered it a duty to set the spending priorities for the state and did their best to work with the legislature to be responsible to taxpayers – especially when times were tough. Not this governor. He considers it a political liability.

“Illinois is facing tough times now, and they’re getting tougher by the day because Gov. Rauner lacks the courage to do the job that 41 governors before him managed to do.

“The governor can continue to sit on the sidelines while my colleagues and I in the Senate do his job for him. We’ll craft a budget for the people of Illinois and save the state from financial ruin. All he has to do is stay out of our way, let us do his job and not make it more difficult for us.”