Macon Reporter

Sen. Chapin Rose (R-Decatur) says the state's unemployment insurance trust fund's debt should be paid off in its entirety, and anything less would cause problems down the road.

“People are going to pay,” Rose said. “Because when you get laid off and you can’t put food on your kids’ table and you can't send your kid to college anymore, you’re going to have up to $400 less in benefits because they didn’t fully fund it today. They’ve had $16 billion over the last two years and they couldn’t fix this.”

WTTW News reported the state's unemployment insurance trust fund is $4.5 billion in debt and it's incurring interest.

Senate Bill 2803 passed both the Senate (33-15) and the House (68-43) along partisan lines and was signed by the governor on March 25. The bill authorizes putting $2.7 billion in government COVID funding toward paying off the unemployment insurance trust fund debt

“It severely shortchanges the amount we need to put into the trust fund to get it back to solvency,” Sen. Win Stoller (R-Peoria) told CI Proud.

The bill makes supplemental appropriations from the Pension Stabilization Fund for financing the unfunded liabilities of the General Assembly Retirement System, the Judges Retirement System of Illinois, the State Employees’ Retirement System of Illinois, the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois, and the State Universities Retirement System. It also appropriates $250 million from the General Revenue Fund to the Illinois Student Assistance Commission.