SE Illinois News

State Rep. Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) has grown tired of being forced to watch his constituents battle an invisible enemy while being left in the dark.

“That’s part of what frustrated me about all this, having to watch people fight to survive while missing out on a lot of the facts to justify some of what we’re seeing happen,” Bailey told the SE Illinois News. “I think the great failure of Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been his failure to address much of anything before just ordering the state and all our businesses to just shut down.”

In some ways, Bailey argues the way Pritzker has handled things has only made a bad situation worse.

“How could he issue a stay-at-home order without first having our unemployment offices ramped up and ready to handle the onslaught of people," Bailey said. "All these grants we’re hearing about now should have also been in place and ready to go. Whatever assistance we had to offer people through this should have been ready to go. Now you’ve got people in need of help that can’t get through to any of these government offices.”

All across the country, such scenes are now playing out with crippling effects.  A new U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Metlife survey finds that over the next two weeks, well over half of all small businesses across the country could be closed.

And with Illinois now one of the nearly 40 states across the country with a stay-at-home order in place, Bailey fears what could lie ahead for the already cash-strapped state.

“The governor ordered people to shut down without having any plan in place and now we face yet another rude awakening when it comes to our finances,” he said. “Our system of high taxes and higher debt means we’ll be worse off than most when this is all over.”