Senator Chris and Sarah Lauzen met privately  for thirty minutes with Romanian President Traian Basescu during his visit to Chicago for the N.A.T.O. Summit.

The purpose of the meeting was to strengthen their relationship and to discuss economic development opportunities that will create jobs in Kane County, Illinois and Romania.  Senator Lauzen was helped by Kane County constituents and Illinois friends to gather proposals of mutual interests.  These ideas included an export plan for Romania of higher value cuts of meat sold to the G-7 (i.e. Germany, France, et. al.) using Illinois feed, agricultural equipment and market information technology; petroleum and natural gas exploration applications; environmentally-friendly waste-to-energy innovations; and private funding of for-profit university education best practices.

President Basescu is a former ship captain in the Romanian merchant fleet, former mayor of Bucharest, and is particularly proud that he is the only President in the European Union to win reelection after the economic recession.

All four of Senator Lauzen’s grandparents emigrated from northwestern Romania to the United States in the early 1900’s.  He has travelled at his own expense three times to Bucharest, Brasov, Bran, Cluj, Timisoara, Arad, Satu Mare, and other towns and regions including the Carpathian Mountains.  “I am deeply grateful for the opportunity and privilege to help build peace and prosperity among the 12 ½ Million people of Illinois and the 24 Million of Romania.  In the American Midwest and South Central Europe, we share the attributes of hard work, practical intelligence, love of family and country, and reverence for God,” Lauzen said.

State Senator Chris Lauzen(R-Aurora) is among a group of lawmakers who are banding together to promotecommon sense government. 

“We are coming together and uniting our efforts to promote alimited, fiscally-responsible and ethically-reformed state government,” saidLauzen.

Senator Lauzen said the management of state government’sfinances over the past ten years has been fiscally reprehensible.

“We will band together and persuade other senators to joinus in opposing bills that aren’t properly funded.  We will say ‘no’ tospending beyond our means,” Lauzen said.  “Our caucus will oppose irresponsible borrowing and fight to repealthe 67 percent tax increase imposed on Illinoisfamilies by the very politicians who ran up billions of dollars in overduebills and budget deficit.”

Senator Lauzen said other policy principles of the CommonSense Caucus include banning ‘corporate welfare’, reforming the public pensionsystems, state’s ethics laws and adopting term limits.

United to Restore Freedom (U.R.F.) Political Action Committee recently released its fifth annual voting scorecard for the Illinois General Assembly.  Senator Chris Lauzen (R-Aurora) was recognized as a “L.I.F.T.” leader with a lifetime voting score of 75% and a 2011 score of 85%.

The U.R.F. scorecard rates Illinois state legislators based on the “L.I.F.T.” principles of Limited government, Individual liberty, Free enterprise, and Traditional values.  Dennis LaComb, Executive Director of U.R.F. Action, said, “With Illinois facing fiscal crisis and social upheaval…the U.R.F. scorecard offers citizens a conservative perspective on how their state legislators vote.”

“I am proud to receive U.R.F.’s ‘L.I.F.T. Leader’ designation,” Lauzen said. “Although my score is not 100%, I have a solid record of consistently supporting reasonable conservative political positions and traditional values that I share with my constituents.”

This is the Governor’s fourth annual budget.  He is not new to this process and this one is another disaster.

As he has for the past three years, Governor Quinn claims that he is “cutting state spending” when the truth is that year-over-year spending again increases.

When the Governor tell citizens of Illinois that his 2013 budget proposal is less than 2008 spending, he is misleading people because he is not includingpensions, debt service and transfers to local governments.  It is like a homeowner saying, “My household expenses have gone down”, but not including the mortgage payments, groceries, etc.  Year-over-year spending, comparing apples to apples with the 2008 budget, the 2013 budget is $3.4 billion more.

This budget proposal anticipates spending 99.5% of all revenue to be collected, so there is next to no provision for paying down unpaid bills of $8.2 billion.  There are $2.7 billion in Medicaid entitlement obligations that will be postponed into next year, if cuts are not implemented this year.  Enrollment has doubled in the last ten years and now 3 million people (one out of every four Illinoisans) is covered by taxpayer paid health care.

Governor Quinn and his enablers have taken nearly $7 billion in more taxes from Illinois residents, but the spending problems and deficit are even worse than before.