Adoption of a $55 billion budget for Illinois next fiscal year is nothing of which we should be proud. It's a budget built to garner votes, not to put the state in a better fiscal condition.

New programs that can be used as campaign hype were added with $1.1 billion that was supposed to be paid to pension funds. Some day those pension funds will have to be repaid.

We're told the new budget does not call for new taxes, but additional fees for various services have, in effect, become back-door tax increases in Illinois for years.

Scattering those increases through the year doesn't have the same widespread negative reaction as an income tax increase would.

Only one person elected to represent all state taxpayers was involved in drafting the budget - Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The only others were Senate President Emil Jones and Speaker of the House Michael Madigan. All are Democrats.

There was not one Republican vote for the budget in the House or Senate, but none was needed. The budget received Democratic support - and Democrats have the majority in both houses.

Republicans said the budget received rank-and-file Democratic support because it has millions of dollars - some call it "pork" - for them to dole out in their districts.

A splinter group of the Democrats, the Hispanic caucus, held up the Senate vote for a day before they were appeased by the Democratic leadership. That usually means they received more money for pet projects.

The governor was given two of his cherished programs to use as bragging points in his re-election campaign this year : A $45 million universal preschool program and money to reduce class sizes in some kindergarten through third-grade classes. Both might be good programs.

But Democratic leaders neglected $1.1 billion in required payments to the pension funds to pay for them.

There is nothing in the budget for the governor's proposed $3.2 billion school/road construction program, which the governor will blame on Republicans. That would have required issuing bonds, which requires more than a majority in the Senate and House.

Republicans had said they would not approve such bonds without specifics on spending. Apparently, it was better for Democrats to ignore the program and blame Republicans than to provide a spending blueprint.

There apparently is also nothing for stem-cell research, although the governor had originally proposed $15 million in his budget.

We say "apparently" only because the governor slipped $10 million into this year's budget for embryonic and adult stem-cell research. Not even all Democrats who supported this year's budget were aware of the research money, which the governor doled out last month.

When will this borrowing to spend end?

Illinois must return to balanced budgets - where expenses don't exceed unborrowed revenues.