arrests but have not yet received a response.

>> Illinois lawmakers are back in Springfield ahead of the spring legislative session and are facing some tough realities.

A 2.2 billion dollar budget gap growing pressure to deliver affordability relief and a widening financial rift with Washington.

Joining us now from Springfield to help break it down is Capitol News.

Illinois State House reporter Ben Zelensky been welcome back.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

So despite a state revenue increase of 5% compared to fiscal year 2025, the state is still facing, as we said, that 2.2 billion dollar budget shortfall heading into the new fiscal year.

How lawmakers explain that shortfall.

>> Yeah, it's exactly uncommon for the state could be facing a deficit like that going into new fiscal year.

Those projections are really based current state law.

So assuming there's no changes to the state's taxing policies that state spending policies, the lawmakers are required to pass a constitutional, balanced budget.

So we do expect there's going to be a proposal that is unveiled by the governor in February.

That is going to address backlog.

So exactly how that's going to be done.

Still kind of remains to be seen.

But I think lawmakers are really looking at this as it's the federal government's fault.

The federal government and Congress has taken money away from the state of Illinois.

There's been new mandates on the state of Illinois.

And, you know, the state has to come up with the money to fill that gap while maintaining their current priorities.

>> Ok, so you mentioned some of those costs that the state is going to have to start absorbing that were previously handled by the federal government.

There is Medicaid, of Governor Pritzker's budget office projects that federal changes to the provider tax program will cut federal Medicaid support to Illinois by 2.8 billion dollars annually by 2031.

That's resulting in an additional 1.7 billion dollar liability for the state and the Trump administration also shifting more financial responsibility to the states for SNAP benefits for Illinois.

That amounts to 80 million dollars a year.

How are these extra expenses?

These additional expenses been going to complicate the budget?

>> Yeah, it's going to get extremely lawmakers and in those billion dollar costs for health care.

Just things the state cannot make hardly any state.

It really has the capability to raised revenue like that and continue to cover existing services while adding on a whole bunch of new people and health care.

So this is going to be a huge challenge for the state to figure out really what the priorities are.

How many people does the state want to absorb on to health care plans?

How many people, you know, as the state can be able to add on to staff, for example.

So, you know, lawmakers are really gonna have to make choices based what is their priorities for spending, how far they're willing to go on tax increases.

For example, and those choices are really going to have to come soon as some of these changes start coming into play in the next couple of years.

>> You did speak with House Speaker Chris Welch today actually give us a sense of his priorities heading into the session.

>> Yeah, he's really focused this idea of affordability is a major concern for voters.

So Democrats are looking at this as Donald Trump has taken office and he hasn't done enough to improve the economy.

Inflation still remains kind of a persistent issue and people are still just struggling to afford basic needs.

Grocery prices remain high.

So state lawmakers really want to look at ways that they can help lower prices for people, especially in this election year where, you know, if Democrats get to attach their name to that and certainly get a look at the polls in November.

So probably going to see some things.

I'm insurance specifically.

State farm raised homeowners insurance rates of Illinois by more than 20% back in the summer.

And I think lawmakers have been pretty frustrated by that and they want to see more reform and regulation that they believe might be able to help the state keep some of those costs down.

>> Also, it's a midterm election year.

The primary elections in Illinois are in March.

How do you think lawmakers are going to be approaching the session with that in mind?

>> Yeah, I don't really expect a whole lot of business to happen before the March 17th primary.

But I think one of the interesting parts will be is that the governor unveils his budget on February 18th.

So, you know, the governor has to really keep in mind here that lawmakers are going to kind of judged what what he's saying and what he's presenting as a vision for Democrats and 2026 and February address.

So I think lawmakers are really going to kind of stay hands off on their own legislation for the most part.

But then the governor is probably and present a budget that is something that voters can stomach.

There's not gonna be huge tax increases or anything, for example.

So I think you're going to see a lot of quiet from Springfield for the next couple of months until that primary election passes by.

>> I mentioned that also means that there's a lot of work to get done after that primary election and they've compress their own timeline.

>> Exactly.

we're going to see a lot, I think, from Springfield this year, especially on the psyche 40 billion I mentioned.

But the budget takes so much time.

And if you know, lawmakers aren't really digging into that in a major way until April.

For example, I think there's going to be a lot of last minute conversations about our taxes and spending priorities and, you know, that's where the negotiations get really hard.

>> particular affordability measures that you think will be under consideration when the time comes.

>> Yeah, I think the on the issue of insurance, I think energy is still going to be something that lawmakers are looking at.

The governor signed a bill that state lawmakers are hoping it's going to bring energy prices down in next several years.

The son that last week, but one of the issues we still see in the state is data centers are eating up a lot of the energy supply.

The state still doesn't really have enough supply in the coming years to meet this demand for energy.

That's driving prices up.

And I think lawmakers really still haven't found a good way to truly address that.

So I think that's going to be part of this affordability agenda.

As far as bringing prices down for utility costs.

Lot of