Access to health care trumped rights to legal remedy and political expediency bested fiscal responsibility as Democrats sacrificed political capital in pursuit of legislative adjournment this spring. They finished the session on time, but the question is how long their actions will hold up.
After nearly two years of debate, the Democratic leadership yielded to pressure for medical liability reforms. By abridging the legal rights of patients, proponents hope to lower malpractice insurance costs for doctors, which they argue will improve access to health care in underserved areas.
And, in another about face, Democrats shorted public employee pension funds by $2.3 billion to balance the state budget. Earlier this year, Gov. Rod Blagojevich promised reforms that would shore up the pension systems. But, with bargaining time dwindling, he and fellow Democrats jettisoned most of the provisions in that reform plan, including one to create a lower tier of retirement benefits for newly hired state and university employees.
In his February budget address, Blagojevich said the cash-hungry public employee pension systems seriously constrict state finances. Without reform, he argued, the state will never be able to eliminate a persistent deficit, one that saps resources "from education, from health care, from law enforcement, from parks, and from everything else we care about."
Blagojevich went on, metaphorically, to explain how the pension problem had grown so severe. "Imagine you have a credit card," he said. "Every month, you keep using that card. At the same time, you're not always paying the balance you owe. In fact, sometimes, you even skip a payment or two.
"But you keep using that card to buy new things. So what happens? The principal goes up, the interest rate goes up and the monthly minimum goes up.
"Just paying the monthly minimum takes away the money you need to pay the rent, pay for groceries, for clothes, and for everything else.
"Now imagine doing this for 35 years.
"For the average family, that's a surefire recipe for personal bankruptcy. But, unfortunately, it's exactly what the state of Illinois has been doing, year in and year out."
Yet, a few months later, he followed that recipe — and added heaping side dishes of pork. Of course, Blagojevich wasn't the only cook stirring the budget stew. Democratic Senate President Emil Jones and House Speaker Michael Madigan joined in.
This signaled a shift for Madigan, too, who had sided with Republicans during last year's marathon battle to hold the budget in check. As late as early May of this year, Madigan told the Illinois Retail Merchants Association that the "coalition of the willing" was still in place and he would continue to side with Republicans in opposing borrowing and spending, living beyond the state's means and balloon financing.
"For those of you that became very familiar with the first budget put together by the Blagojevich Administration, you know that there was a great deal of balloon financing, millions and millions of dollars in debt with no scheduled repayment until after the next general election," Madigan said.
Nevertheless, the budget Madigan, Jones and Blagojevich settled on this year pushes $2.3 billion in pension payments past the November 2006 general election, a contest in which Blagojevich, two-thirds of the Senate and the entire House will be up for re-election. It also seeks to avoid painful negotiations next spring by deferring another $1.1 billion in pension payments in the fiscal year 2007 budget.
Meanwhile, the fiscal year 2006 budget, which begins July 1, hinges on deferring $1.2 billion in pension payments to close a comparable gap between revenue and spending. This means the state is putting off more than half of its annual obligation to fund pensions for suburban and downstate teachers, state and university employees, judges and lawmakers. Retirees will still get checks, but the deferral exacerbates shortfalls that have forced some pension funds to sell stocks and other assets to meet yearly payouts.
The pension raid, as Republicans dubbed it, proved more palatable than wide-ranging pension reforms, which would have forced Democrats to stand up to public employee unions that represent state and university workers and teachers across Illinois. Lawmakers did cap educators' end-of-career raises at 6 percent a year, but exempted existing contracts. Blagojevich had originally advocated a 3 percent cap. Teachers also got to hang on to an early retirement option, but must increase their salary contributions from 9 percent to 9.4 percent to finance the perk. Current state workers were not subjected to any reforms, while university employees could see lower annual interest adjustments to their pensions and new hires won't be eligible for the more lucrative money purchase option for calculating retirement benefits.
Blagojevich's budget office says the scaled-back reforms could still save $30 billion by 2045. He originally proposed $55 billion in sweeping changes that would have dropped new state and university hires into a lower tier of benefits, which included reduced annual interest adjustments, a higher retirement age and longer minimum tenure requirements for collecting benefits.
"When we set out in the beginning of this session to reform the pension systems, we were very ambitious," Blagojevich said. "But because the Republicans have chosen, again, to play partisan politics and have refused to join us in constructive consensus, we weren't able to get all the pension reforms that we asked for. And this is part of a democratic process, so you get what you can get when you can."
Rank-and-file Democrats seemed to take that logic to heart. They approved a $10.8 billion capital construction program — $1.4 billion larger than the governor's original request. Just over $1 billion of that is for old projects that were not included in Blagojevich's proposal. That saves plenty of room for "member initiative" projects that were agreed to under former Gov. George Ryan but never funded. Blagojevich essentially hijacked political capital accumulated by his Republican predecessor, using old projects to influence fellow Democrats.
Most of the projects aren't explicitly detailed in the new budget. But one section of the legislation outlines nearly $1.9 billion in lump sums that range from $18 million for school improvements to $375 million for local government grants. The bill also stipulates that none of that money is to be spent without written permission from the governor.
Republicans did their best to point out the potential pork, but it was the House Black Caucus that drew the most attention, pulling nine votes off the pension bill in a May 31 negotiating maneuver.
"We're tired of being screwed," Rep. Monique Davis, a Chicago Democrat, said as she and other black representatives filed into the speaker's office for some last-minute haggling. "We're Democrats, too. We're black ones, but we're Democrats."
A few hours later, the Black Caucus helped approve the pension legislation and ensuing budget bills. But the caucus would not go along with another late-session compromise by Democrats: caps. Jones and Madigan voted against medical malpractice reforms that include limits on jury awards for noneconomic damages such as pain and suffering.
After nearly two years of debate, the Democratic leadership yielded to pressure for medical liability reforms.
But as presiding officers in their respective chambers, they could have prevented caps from getting a vote. Instead, the General Assembly sent Blagojevich a measure that would cap noneconomic liabilities at $500,0000 for physicians and $1 million for hospitals.
Several Democrats, including most African-American lawmakers, voted against the limits, arguing they discrim-inate against the poorest plaintiffs because those who are employed likely would receive greater compensation for lost wages. They also argue caps hurt the most badly injured, perhaps allowing someone the same compensation whether he or she loses one toe or an entire leg. And someone run over by a bus, for instance, could recoup greater damages than a person severely injured by a doctor.
For the past two years, the state's top Democrats, especially Madigan, resisted caps, arguing they limit the injured poor's access to legal remedy because attorneys may not be interested in taking on cases when their compensation is capped along with the jury award.
Blagojevich has said he'll sign the medical malpractice legislation, which also includes some insurance reforms and makes it easier for patients to check a doctor's malpractice history. Still, the provision establishing caps is based on logic the Illinois Supreme Court has twice rejected, most recently in 1997 when it ruled that caps on noneconomic damages in all lawsuits usurped judicial authority and amounted to unconstitutional special legislation.
On medical malpractice, Democrats have left the heavy lifting to the courts. And their budget shifts financial strain to the post-election future. The question is what cost the party will pay for abandoning its defense of plaintiffs' rights and fiscal responsibility.
Perhaps Democratic voters will decide their loyalty is as fleeting as their party's principles.
Pat Guinane can be reached at capitolbureau@aol.com.
Illinois Issues, June 2005
