Today, the bipartisan, bicameral Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (COGFA) released their updated revenue projections, painting Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s budget as more than $1 billion out of balance.

“The independent COGFA numbers show the governor used aggressively inflated revenue projections to minimize the cuts or tax increases his budget would require to be balanced,” said Illinois Senate Republican Leader John Curran (R-Downers Grove). “This is why it is absolutely necessary that the governor rein in the spending on unsustainable non-citizen programs and prioritize the taxpayers he was elected to represent.” 

The COGFA revenue report projects state revenues for the next fiscal year at $740 million below the figures that the governor used in his recent budget address. When removing the governor’s proposed changes to state law, as required by statute, the total deficit increases to $1.2 billion. 

It should be noted that the budget proposed by the governor was once again heavily dependent on theoretical policies and tax increases that have not been proposed or approved by the General Assembly. 

“I would like to say that I’m shocked that the governor’s plan is so far out of whack, but the truth is that we’ve been saying this all along,” said Senate Republican Chief Budgeteer Chapin Rose (R-Mahomet). “Every year the governor tells us he’s passed another balanced budget, only to find out the next year how upside-down his spending plan really was.”

Worse yet, if the governor fails to follow through on his promise of cutting spending for noncitizen healthcare, the total projected deficit will grow to $1.6 billion.

“While the governor spends his days chasing national headlines doing interviews on anything but the state he was elected to manage, this new report shows that his fuzzy math budget is out of balance by over $1 billion,” said State Senator Don DeWitte (R-St. Charles). “This means he and his Democratic allies will either have to cut spending, increase taxes or both. It is time for the governor to take a break from the national stage and focus on the dire financial situation he has created by irresponsible spending in our state.” 

The COGFA report also projects a deficit for the current fiscal year of roughly $525 million. If the projections hold true, that would mean that the state has to cover a half a billion dollars of money for the previous year, before even dealing with the next fiscal year.

The report can be found here: https://cgfa.ilga.gov/Upload/03042025RevEstEconForecast.pdf