U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk of Highland Park, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Illinois, opposes a Kentucky Republican senator’s stand against extension of unemployment benefits.
Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., is blocking action in the Senate to extend the benefits. The blocked legislation also includes some highway money and Bunning’s action has temporarily shut down more than 40 projects nationwide, including a $1 million road project in Alexander County in far southern Illinois.
“I voted for the unemployment extension last week,” Kirk told The State Journal-Register during a visit to Springfield Monday. “In Washington, 41 senators can stop something, but one senator can only delay it. My read on this is the vote is pretty much 99 to one.”
Bunning says the $10 billion expansion would add to the budget deficit. He proposes paying for the extension with unspent money from last year’s economic recovery package.
Lawmakers are likely to resolve the dispute this week, the Associated Press reported, but Democrats point to the impasse as an example of the GOP blocking relief to the unemployed.
“I think it’s a reasonable cost given the pain that Illinois families are going though,” Kirk said of the bill.
Kirk said he thinks Democrats are trying to “change the subject” away from Broadway Bank, the family bank of Kirk’s Democratic rival for the U.S. Senate, state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.
Giannoulias was an executive of the Chicago bank before he was elected to his first term as treasurer in 2006. The bank, which lost $75.3 million last year, is under pressure to come up with about $85 million in new capital, bank spokesman Tilden Katz told the Associated Press.
“I think he should be held accountable for the decisions that he made as a loan officer of the bank,” Kirk said of Giannoulias.
Kathleen Strand, spokeswoman for the Giannoulias campaign, responded that Kirk had supported “the failed and reckless Bush policies that got us into this economic mess.”
Kirk was interviewed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Springfield, where he was scheduled Monday evening to give the keynote speech to the annual conference of the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System. Kirk also attended a fund-raiser at a Springfield home.
Kirk said Illinois has the highest per-capital gang membership of all 50 states and said he wants to eliminate the powerful Gangster Disciples.
“I’d like to set an 18- or 24-month deadline, line up federal, state and local law enforcement, and executive a campaign plan and take ’em out,” he said.
Peoria has 20 gangs, Kirk said, and gangs also plague Danville and the Metro East area.
“There are 68,000 Gangster Disciples – 18,000 in prison alone,” he said. “This is a criminal empire that far eclipses anything that Al Capone had.”
Bernard Schoenburg can be reached at 788-1540.
Read the original article from The State Journal-Register.
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