A group of Illinois House Republicans gathered this week at the capitol to discuss the Illinois Department of Employment Services and debt the state owes the Federal Government for benefits that were paid over the last two years when Governor Pritzker shut down the state.

Republicans say state officials knew last year they were going to have to pay back over $5-billion which they had borrowed from the Federal Government, however, Democrats who control the legislature. They believe rather than take the bull by the horns and deal with this last year decided they didn’t want to have to deal with this until July 1st. This is a problem because on April 1st of this year the state’s exemption runs out on how to deal with funding the unemployment benefit fund. State Representative Dan Caulkins (R-Decatur) says we are fighting a deadline something needs to be done very soon.

Illinois was originally one of 22 states that applied for these advanced federal loans. But after the state missed the Sept. 6 loan repayment deadline, Illinois finds itself among 10 states accruing interest on that debt. Illinois missed the Sept. 6 deadline to repay the federal loan to the state’s unemployment insurance fund, which leaves Illinois taxpayers on the hook to pay $60 million in annual interest on that loan.

Illinois saw unemployment peak at 16.3% in April 2020 as Gov. J.B. Pritzker mandated business closures statewide. Over 202,000 Illinoisans in a week filed for unemployment back then. That’s more than 12 times the number of claims the Illinois Department of Employment Security received in the same period during the Great Recession. All those claims led to the $5.8 billion deficit when more was paid to out-of-work claimants than was in the fund.