Next Sunday (Oct. 2) on Political Shootout guests will be Joe Birkett, DuPage County state’s attorney and a Republican candidate for governor, and Mike Noonan, Democratic strategist. Mike ran the successful Lisa Madigan campaign for attorney general against Joe so the show will probably be hot enough to be worthy of its name.
Last night’s show was excellent, with State Sen. Bill Brady (R-Bloomington) and Becky Carroll, spokesperson for Gov. Blagojevich’s Office of Budget and Management. Brady was superb and let me say Carroll kept right up with him. Highly articulate and thoroughly knowledgeable about state government, she is a true winner for the Blago administration (which ought to use her more in a public response: my unsolicited opinion). Bill Brady showed real courage by standing up for his vote in behalf of supporting the kids of aliens who were born here to go to the U of I. That and refusing to demagogue for the removal of Bob Kjellander (which I once favored but since have changed my mind), a meaningless gesture which is getting kinda old.
Thanks for your comments Tom. Always love being on the show. Even though Senator Brady and I don't see eye to eye on much, it was a thoroughly enjoyable match up.
ReplyDeletebtw -- Senator Brady commented last night on how the state's Medicaid budget spends 20% of its funding on administration. I was quite surprised to hear that, so I checked with a few our fiscal analysts at OMB and HFS. They confirmed that only one percent of the HFS Medicaid budget is spent on administrative costs, while 5.5% of the combined state agency Medicaid budgets (HFS, DHS, DCFS, etc) is dedicated towards administrative spending.
This makes much sense when you take into account the billions in administrative spending that has been cut under Governor Blagojevich, as well as our efforts to reduce state headcount numbers to a 30-year plus low.