Springfield is confronting a $500 million-plus deficit, and Gov. JB Pritzker, the state’s top Democrat, has pledged to balance the budget without raising taxes. So what is House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch doing with two weeks left in the spring session?
He’s excommunicated a long-time lawmaker, state Rep. Fred Crespo, D-Hoffman Estates, from his party’s caucus.
And the sin that Crespo supposedly committed to warrant banishment?
He had the audacity to produce his own proposal aimed at addressing the immediate budget hole while also setting aside funds for what may be more shortfalls soon to come.
Crespo’s blueprint would freeze state government hiring and impose an across-the-board reduction in discretionary spending to ensure money is available for potential near-term negative surprises courtesy of the Trump administration. Under Crespo’s approach, state agencies could see their budgets restored if the squirreled-away money isn’t needed.
Not exactly an outrageous idea.
Welch told reporters that generating a budget plan deviating from whatever House leadership has in mind is a no-no in his caucus.
We think you shouldn’t give much credence to Welch’s complaints by way of explanation that Crespo was uncommunicative with fellow Democratic leaders or that he failed to follow the “processes” Welch had established at the outset of what everyone knew was going to be the toughest budget year in Springfield since Pritzker first took office in 2019.
What Crespo really did wrong was to suggest something other than more revenues to address Illinois’ fiscal woes.
Even as we decry this turn of events, we acknowledge there are certain expectations that flow from appointments to leadership positions, like Crespo’s chairmanship of the House General Services Appropriations Committee. It wasn’t a surprise that Welch yanked that chairmanship from Crespo after the latter went public with his proposal. But Welch went much further, barring Crespo from Democratic caucus meetings. That’s an absurd overreaction and a punishment far more harsh than the “crime” deserved.
So Crespo — who’s served in Springfield for 18 years, six years longer than Welch himself — is now a Democratic Party member in exile for not being a “team player.” The unmistakable message: in Welch’s House of Representatives, Democratic moderates who think for themselves and question their own party’s orthodoxies are unwelcome.
Sound familiar? After Democrats lost the presidency and both chambers of Congress, one might have thought leaders such as Welch would have learned that imposing litmus tests and loyalty oaths and lessening the party’s already-dwindling appeal to centrists and moderates was a losing strategy.
Unlike in Washington, D.C., Democrats are in no immediate danger of losing power in Illinois, if for no other reason than they’ve gerrymandered state legislative districts so aggressively. A Republican voting surge in November 2024 meant only that Democrats failed to gain any seats in the state House thanks to those egregious maps.
But make no mistake. Repudiating the moderate voters whom Crespo represents is a losing play and will lead eventually to diminishment of power. It doesn’t convey strength; it communicates precisely the opposite. Democrats need to encourage more debate within their ranks, not less.
Look at what came of the harsh admonishments of anyone who questioned President Joe Biden’s mental fitness in the latter stages of his presidency. That did not age well.
Moreover, muting moderate voices within the Democratic Party is bad for the state of Illinois. We’ve seen the results progressive hegemony is producing in Chicago and (to a lesser degree) in the state. That would be budgets that rise inexorably despite lack of revenue growth, taxes, fees and fines that keep rising.
And an anemic economic performance.
“I have no regrets,” Crespo told us last week. “I’m disappointed but not surprised.” But, he added, “I’m going to continue speaking on the budget. That I can tell you.”
Good. Illinois needs you, Rep. Crespo.
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