17th District Congressional Candidates: Boosting Illinois' Economy
By: Blake Long
Updated: October 24, 2012
As next month's election draws closer, we're finding out where the
local candidates stand on the issues. In the 17th District Congressional
Race, Republican Bobby Schilling faces Democrat Cheri Bustos. We're asking the candidates a question regarding our state's economy. We've all heard about Illinois' dire financial situation. We're asking what they think has contributed to the state's current fiscal situation and what they would do to help with the state's recovery.
Cheri Bustos:
"I'm going to point to the federal budget for a second, we have a government accountability report that shows that we have overlapping agencies, in some cases when it comes to job retraining we have eight separate programs that are all doing similar type of work, it's unnecessary. So, this report which is nonpartisan, shows that we could save $100 billion just by getting rid of duplicated services or duplicated agencies and yet this report has been out for two years, we haven't done anything with it. And I think those are the type of ideas that we can look at that are relatively painless that could save a lot of money."
Bobby Schilling:
"We have to have people, elected officials it doesn't matter what party they represent who are going to work in the best interest of the state. The buddy system has to go away. Ya know when you've got higher up folks coming in and picking who's going to run in certain seats and things like that, passing onto family members seats, that has to be eliminated. We need people that are going to look out for Illinois in a business sense and when they're going to make a decision, ya know, how is that decision going to affect us over a ten year period. The way it's run for years and years, both democrats and republicans are at fault on this also, is they'll make a decision and then we'll worry about the adverse, whatever happens later on, ya know they'll worry about that later, so it's got to be so it's got to be interest right away up front."
Cheri Bustos:
"I'm going to point to the federal budget for a second, we have a government accountability report that shows that we have overlapping agencies, in some cases when it comes to job retraining we have eight separate programs that are all doing similar type of work, it's unnecessary. So, this report which is nonpartisan, shows that we could save $100 billion just by getting rid of duplicated services or duplicated agencies and yet this report has been out for two years, we haven't done anything with it. And I think those are the type of ideas that we can look at that are relatively painless that could save a lot of money."
Bobby Schilling:
"We have to have people, elected officials it doesn't matter what party they represent who are going to work in the best interest of the state. The buddy system has to go away. Ya know when you've got higher up folks coming in and picking who's going to run in certain seats and things like that, passing onto family members seats, that has to be eliminated. We need people that are going to look out for Illinois in a business sense and when they're going to make a decision, ya know, how is that decision going to affect us over a ten year period. The way it's run for years and years, both democrats and republicans are at fault on this also, is they'll make a decision and then we'll worry about the adverse, whatever happens later on, ya know they'll worry about that later, so it's got to be so it's got to be interest right away up front."
