More Rauner Hypocrisy Revealed

Written by David E. Smith

This past weekend, incumbent Governor Bruce Rauner appeared on the Flannery Fired Up political program on Chicago’s local Fox32 station (WFLD). During this thirty-minute weekly program, political reporter Mike Flannery went one-on-one with Rauner, covering a number of state issues.

What caught my attention and got me fired up was their discussion about the structural imbalance of the Illinois state budget. In their exchange, Rauner had the audacity to complain that healthcare costs for state employees are “out of control,” rightly saying that it healthcare is “broken.” Rauner claims that the state could save three-quarters of a billion dollars a year by revamping healthcare plans for state employees. Watch:

While Flannery substantiated Rauner’s concerns about the high costs of healthcare benefits, pointing out that the state of Illinois picks up approximately 90 percent of the costs (with minimum co-payment requirements), he didn’t mention the fact that Rauner signed legislation to expand these benefits (and entitlements) when he put his signature on HB 40, thereby mandating taxpayer-funding of abortion. This so-called “health” program will cost Illinois taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year. (Please see this info-graph.)

Rauner not only acknowledges in this interview that the state of Illinois provides employees and retirees “platinum coverage for life,” but that this policy is “unfair to taxpayers, it’s unfair to citizens” and that these resources could be going to fund “healthcare and education for the citizens of the state.” Yet, he unashamedly put his imprimatur on HB 40.

It is not just unfair to compel taxpayers to provide monetary resources for human slaughter, it is also first and foremost fundamentally unfair to innocent pre-born human beings to deny them their right to life.

Add to this the fact that Rauner signed into law HB 217 and SB 1564, and it becomes crystal clear that he is a big-government liberal who has no business calling himself a Republican. It is just another deception that he is shamelessly perpetuating.  Let me remind you what these laws do:

• HB 217 prohibits counselors from helping children suffering from unwanted same-sex attraction or gender-confusion; and

• SB 1564 quashes rights-of-conscience protections by requiring pro-life doctors to refer patients to abortion providers.

Think about how tyrannical this administration has been. Rauner not only signed into law taxpayer-funding of abortion but also legislation that censors professional therapists and counselors and legislation that forces pro-life medical professionals to violate their conscience, mandating that they give referrals to abortuaries. These are actions we would expect from left-wing Democrats–not a Republican who claimed he had “no social agenda.”

Finally, during this interview Rauner disputed the fact that SB 31 turned Illinois into a “sanctuary state” for illegal immigrants. This dishonest claim was dispelled in a 2017 IFI article in which we point out how this legislation does, in fact, make Illinois a sanctuary state by prohibiting state and local law enforcement officials from making any arrests anywhere in Illinois. (Read more at IllinoisReview.com.)

Evidently, Bruce Rauner cannot be honest with himself let alone with the citizens of Illinois about the tyrannical governance (and left-wing ideology) of his administration.

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