(CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Your mother may have told you nothing good happens after midnight. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul (pictured) says he lived it as May turned into June.
“The (FY 27) budget had included the full, keeping us just flat. All iterations of it all the way until 3 a.m. in the morning (June 1) had us fully funded, so I don’t know.” Raoul told the City Club of Chicago Tuesday the General Assembly shorted his office $10 million.
Raoul said a Republican lawmaker had pressed him on why he is always fighting the Trump administration as opposed to doing more to work with it. Raoul said, in a way, he is. “When different things are coming from Washington to try to coerce us to an agenda with federal funding, my answer was that we had saved $8.6 billion for the state of Illinois,” said Raoul. “That’s real money for stuff like transportation infrastructure, for emergency management money for first responders.”
Raoul notes U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has advocated for stronger civics education. “I think what he was saying is that if the President of the United States can be attacking the judiciary every time the judiciary ruled against him, the only thing we have left to sort of protect the rule of law and the construct that our Founders envisioned is the people, if they are educated about that design.”
Raoul says he always has a couple of pocket-sized Constitutions on him, just in case someone needs one.
