But they did one good thing, they passed caps on damages for lawsuits, don't the trial lawyers give them tons of money? Isn't that leadership? Not really. The Democrats know that the Illinois Supreme court, under Democratic control, has struck caps down before and will most likely do so again, so for all the crocodile tears the lawyers are shedding they are still counting on the courts to bale them out. What I want to point out is the totally typical Democratic budget.

It's the same old same old. Cutting pensions short so they can pretend that the budget is balanced. Handing out pork so that they can muster enough votes to get the budget passed without having to involve the GOP thereby keeping the pork to their members to buy votes back home. But look at the final product, is there any new initiatives? Any way to bring spending into control? Is there any plan? This budget could have been written 30 years ago. The Democratic party is doing what it has always done expanding government, exploding spending on old tired policies, pouring money into Chicago without any oversight. It is nothing more than the old days of smokefilled rooms and backroom deals that the Governor said he was going to stop. The Governor never intended to change anything, the Democratic leaders in Springfield like things the way they are.

I can't leave out the Republicans in this, they have not shown any backbone, they have not proposed any cuts or new ideas. You get the feeling that they're mad because they were left out of the dishing out of pork. Where is the GOP budget? Where are our ideas for controlling government spending? Why would anyone vote against the Democrats just to put in a party that's not as good at backroom politics as the one already in?

Where is the GOP leadership? The Chicago Tribune had a poll out a few weeks ago and George Bush only received 36% approval for his handling of the economy! That my friends is a lack of leadership on the part of the GOP. It is up to the ILGOP to let the people of Illinois know that the rest of the country is booming! Most of the country is now in their 26th month of economic expansion! Why is Illinois lagging so far behind? Could it be that many of the tax cuts the President passed in his first year were never put into practice in Illinois? Why is there no one pointing this out?

Illinois is the poster child of Democratic control of government. Our growth is lagging behind the rest of the country, our business climate is so bad that businesses are leaving in droves. The corruption is so entrenched that the people going to jail are connected to both parties. We have started every General Assembly since the Democrats have taken over, with a fiscal deficit of at least a billion dollars and thanks to the smoke and mirrors of the last budget next year will be more of the same. This is Democratic governance, nothing new, no vision, no future just tax increases and raided funds. Take, take, take.

If the GOP wants to take the government back in Illinois they better start by promoting policies that the national party has long ago claimed as there own. Cutting taxes, slowing down the rate of growth of government, reigning in anti- business regulations and fee's and finding ways to grow out of deficits not tax our way out. That's how the Republicans gained majority status in the country let's try it here in Illinois.

Hey Rep Cross, Senator Watson and Andy McKenna remember Ronald Reagan?

One-minute radio commercials began last week in Rockford, Peoria, Elgin, Aurora, Champaign, Springfield and throughout southern Illinois. Oberweis' views on the economy are important because he built a business, parallel to his dairy enterprise, as a forecaster of economic activity and it has been cited for right-on-the-money predictions. In a discussion with me, Oberweis declared that his goal is to prompt Illinois to match the record in the nation. ''Last year, this country had the biggest increase in productivity in a generation: 4.1 percent,'' he said. ''Our steel production hit a new record high, albeit with 75 percent fewer jobs -- but still with output at a record high.

''I don't think Illinois has a revenue problem at all. Our tax revenue has been very strong. What we need to do is not to encourage government to take a bigger piece of the pie through taxes but to grow that pie.''

Oberweis trades on a grudge conservatives have with the Illinois GOP establishment. He has run twice for the U.S. Senate and lost, once talking about illegal immigration in language that brought charges that he is anti-Hispanic -- which he denies. Although he placed second in the 2004 Senate race, Oberweis was denied the nomination after front-runner Jack Ryan was forced to withdraw -- the word being that the White House disapproved of Oberweis' immigration stance.

But his political career resembles that of Wisconsin's William Proxmire. A Democrat, Proxmire ran for governor unsuccessfully in 1952, 1954 and 1956 in what then was a solidly Republican state. He never became governor, but won a special election in 1957 to succeed the late Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. Once in office, Proxmire so endeared himself to voters with a blend of progressive and conservative themes that he handily won re-election, slowly turning the state Democratic.

Oberweis believes that in Democrat-controlled Illinois, his beliefs must be stated unceasingly. In essence, he told me, he intends to lead a three-pronged electoral revolution. The first theme: state income tax cuts and sharply pared state spending which he, as an economic expert, forecasts will cause the state economy and job growth to spurt.

''I don't think it's nearly as hard a problem as many people believe,'' Oberweis told me. ''Forbes magazine has listed Illinois as 47th out of the 50 states in terms of a desirable place to locate and grow a business. With a terrific university system and a solid manufacturing base and a basically sound farm economy, there's no reason why Illinois should be lagging behind the rest of the country.''

The second plank: education, presaging a bloody crusade against powerful teachers' unions. ''Here's where I prove I'm not a politician,'' Oberweis said. ''We need more business principles involved in education, where teachers who do well are rewarded financially and teachers who do poorly are not. That's not what we have today at all. We have a system where the longer they teach, the more they get paid. We need to hold principals of schools accountable as the managers of business. The principal has to be able to hire, fire and build his staff. If he is unsuccessful and does a bad job, that principal needs to be fired by the school board and replaced.'' A key element, he said, would be school choice or vouchers.

The third theme: political reform. ''Right now, it's clearly a pay to play situation,'' Oberweis said, where big contributors exert policy. ''I think we need to end accepting contributions from people with contracts with the state and make sure it's applied across the board in state government, not just at the governor's end.''

As one who has contributed heavily to Republicans but who has been blacklisted by the Thompson-Edgar-George Ryan organizations and opposed by some in Washington, Jim Oberweis, with a boyish grin resembling a Norman Rockwell magazine cover, sounds as much a maverick to a GOP nearly down and out as was Bill Proxmire running against two parties: the Republicans and leaders of his own

As he scurries around his tough-to-access Palatine office with no name on the door, Fitzgerald, much slimmer than he was as senator, wearing a sports shirt and jeans, looks, except for premature baldness, like a precociously nerdy college undergraduate preparing to enter the world. At 44, he has been a lawyer, investment banker, leading state senator and maverick U.S. senator who confounded Democrats with his conservative principles and dismayed some GOP regulars by refusing to approve pork for Illinois. He insisted on his right to name prosecutors without interference from House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, blocked an attempt to load the new Lincoln library and museum with patronage hacks, and single-handedly blocked expansion of O'Hare airport.

He decided not to run for re-election to spend time with his family as many seasoned pols heaved sighs of relief. In retirement Fitzgerald has become a cult hero of sorts because of his fearlessness in criticizing the established bipartisan order in Illinois.

Commenting on the $57 billion state budget, balanced partly by use of funds committed to pensions for Downstate and suburban teachers, Fitzgerald said: "I think it's really remarkable that Gov. Blagojevich is plundering the state pension funds. He's taking $2 billion out of the state pension funds and putting it in the operating budget. If the CEO at a private corporation did that, he'd go to jail. You'd go to prison!

"Do you remember the great baseball pitcher Denny McLain? He had 31 wins in 1968 with the Detroit Tigers, the all-time record. Well, after he left baseball, he bought a company with some friends. He and his friends took $4 million out of the company's pension funds. Denny McLain went to jail for taking money out of pension funds and spending it on something else! Poor Denny McLain! If he wanted to loot and plunder pension funds and do so legally, he should have become governor of Illinois!"

With almost all Democrats supporting Blagojevich and no Republicans voting for the budget, "they broke a law," Fitzgerald said. "It was [Senators] Steve Rauschenberger [R-Elgin], Chris Lauzen [R-Aurora] and I -- part of the 'Fab Five' [all elected in 1992 with Patrick O'Malley of Palos Park, and David Syersen of Rockford] who passed a law under the Edgar administration which was designed to prevent governors from plundering the pension funds. We put the state on a path toward amortizing over 50 years the unfunded liabilities in our pension funds. We have the most underfunded pensions in the U.S. It's like 50 percent funded -- not like other states. Florida is 100 percent funded.

"This is a gargantuan millstone hanging over the whole state of Illinois due to the pension pyramid they built where they promise benefits and haven't set the money aside. It's going to come unglued, and the whole state is going to be in financial ruin. And there is not going to be anybody to bail it out.

"United Airlines didn't fund their pensions. They were able to hand over their pensions because they were insured by the federal government through the Pension Benefit Guaranty corporation. These state pensions aren't insured. They're going to have to be paid at some point by the taxpayers. My guess is that, years down the road, we're going to be one of the most highly taxed states in the country to pay those pensions. Because they're promising the benefits and they still sweeten them! When I was down there [in Springfield], I was the only one in the Legislature to vote against the bill that teachers could retire at age 50 with an 80 percent pension! At age 50! I was the only one in either House to vote against it! Every newspaper editorialized against it, but no one would vote against it because you had all those teachers who wanted to retire at age 50! Well, that was scandalous . . .

"Well, somebody's going to pay for that. Then, of course, what the teachers have been doing is -- right before they retire, their school district boosts their salary, and then they get 80 percent of their final salary. And there's health insurance for life. And then they get another job when they turn 50. I think schoolteachers are wonderful, but this is out of control."

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."

We are fighting an enemy that murdered 3,000 innocent people on American soil 3 1/2 years ago and would murder millions more if given the chance--and according to Dick Durbin, our soldiers are the Nazis.

==>IL Senator Dick Durbin