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CHICAGO - Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey is calling for an "Illinois DOGE" program to address what he described as fraud and waste in state government.
What we know:
While Bailey is calling the program a "Blueprint for Illinois," he also referred to the Elon Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency that led an effort in the first months of the new Trump administration to cut government spending and reduce the federal workforce.
"People want to know where their money’s coming from, and they want to know where it’s going," Bailey said during the announcement. "That’s what we’re going to address with DOGE."
The 2022 GOP nominee for governor, who’s running again to challenge Pritzker, added that the state budget needed to be audited and that he was "very confident there is going to be a lot of waste discovered in that."
Bailey announced the proposal this week with his running mate for lieutenant governor, Aron Del Mar, a former councilman in suburban Palatine, who will be tasked with running the program should the two be elected.
While the pair did not discuss specific cuts to the state’s $55 billion budget, they said they’re focused on uncovering waste, fraud, and corruption. On the website blueprintforillinois.com, the proposal entails property tax relief, lowering utility bills, improving public safety, and various public education reforms. Bailey and Del Mar are also pushing for ethics reforms like banning state lawmakers from being employed as lobbyists for at least five years after leaving office.
"Illinois government has become too complex, too costly and too insulated from oversight," Del Mar said.
Still, the pair tried to distinguish their proposal from Musk’s effort, which prompted a nationwide backlash and which Democrats criticized for not being careful in how it went about cutting spending.
"We’re not going in here with a chainsaw," Del Mark said, an apparent reference to when Musk wielded a chainsaw when talking about DOGE at a conservative conference last year. "We’re going in here with an X-Acto knife. We are doing this as a purely policy effort. This is not politically driven."
Del Mar also argued that while the DOGE moniker might hold negative connotations to voters, the aim is to engender trust in government among Illinoisans.
"People may not like the brand, and they may not like the name, but I guarantee you, they are going to love the result," he said.
The other side:
Also this week, Gov. JB Pritzker appeared to reference Bailey’s push for an Illinois DOGE while arguing the proposals were not necessary as there were already regular audits and other oversight measures in state government.
"What he’s suggesting is redundant, and I don’t think anyone in Illinois thinks that we ought to do what Elon Musk did to the federal government in the State of Illinois with something like DOGE," Pritzker said at a separate news conference in Joliet.