Dear Governor,

Your criticism of those who oppose your recent expansions of healthcare programs to persons who do not satisfy established legislatively approved eligibility requirements as being "*** Scrooge-like in many ways," is telling. What you don’t understand is that concerned citizens and taxpayers like myself, who are fully supportive of making basic healthcare available to all, want those reforms to be achieved in a constitutional manner. The Separations of Powers Provision in our State Constitution strictly prohibits the Executive from infringing upon or exercising the powers the Constitution exclusively reserves for the Legislature to exercise. It is for the Legislature to decide to amend, expand public assistance programs, enact new ones, and to determine the funding that will be made available for each such program.

The recent expansion of State subsidized health insurance to those making 400% or less of the federal poverty level and the expansion of free breast screening to all uninsured Illinois women without regard to their personal wealth are estimated will cost more than $400 million this fiscal year. These additional expenditures have not been authorized by the Legislature and the money to pay for these costs has not been appropriated.

I have challenged your and Executive Branch's right to do this because what is at risk is far more important than the expansions and costs, and even the medical help that is being provided. The Separation of Powers Provision is intended to protect us from autocratic rule by the Executive. A benign dictatorship is still a dictatorship and if the Governor has the authority, as you claim, to govern as he deems best, irrespective of constitutional limitations and statutory requirements, all our civil liberties and rights are imperiled. We become no longer a people and society subject to and governed by the rule of law, but rather by the whim and dictates of an autocratic Ruler. You made this clear when you announced in August that you would expand healthcare programs even though the Legislature rejected your legislative proposals to make those changes.

Furthermore, by imposing these additional costs and public debt increases, you and your underlings have resorted to imperial England’s practice towards the American Colonies of taxation without representation. We have an elected Legislature in this State that alone has that right. You are violating our rights and the Legislature’s exclusive prerogatives by creating these public debts. By doing so, you have also created an unprecedented constitutional crisis. I pray that the Judiciary quickly restores constitutionalism to the State’s governance.