FROM: Keith Kelleher, president, SEIU Healthcare Illinois & Indiana

(November 8th, 2015, Chicago) –This week will go a long way toward determining the future of child care and home healthcare in Illinois and whether Bruce Rauner will retain the ability to hold our social safety net hostage as leverage to achieve his extreme political agenda.

On Tuesday, November 10th the General Assembly is expected to act on legislation to reverse Rauner eligibility cuts to the Child Care Assistance Program. These cuts, by his own estimation, already have denied 70,000 kids the quality, affordable child care for which they previously had been eligible. This is by far the biggest injury that program, which has enjoyed broad bipartisan support, has ever suffered.

Also on Tuesday, legislators are expected to take up an amendatory veto by Rauner on House Bill 2482, which would reverse eligibility requirements that were meant to exclude some 34,000 seniors and people with disabilities from the home healthcare services that keep them in their homes—and out of costlier long-term care that would cost taxpayers dearly.

In private conversations, many Republicans have told us how pained they have been to be put in this position of voting against the most vulnerable people in their communities and against programs that actually benefit the economy, save taxpayer dollars and help people who often are their friends and neighbors and, in some cases, their flesh and blood. Some of them have actually broken down in tears describing the threats and intimidation they’ve faced from Bruce Rauner and his allies, who themselves have made very clear they are willing to do or say anything they believe will help achieve their union-busting, non-budgetary goals.

Enough is enough.

The votes this week are a chance for Illinois to take a step back from the brink to which Rauner has driven us as a state, stand up for the successful child care and home healthcare programs, and to commit to a new path toward getting the budget crisis resolved. Without hostages.

###