By Greg Bishop/Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – The leading House Democrat said Thursday he couldn’t provide assurances that a budget deal would be done by tonight’s midnight deadline.
House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, said during a Thursday news conference that he couldn’t answer if a deal would be finalzied.
“I don’t plan to offer any statements of that nature at all,” Madigan said. “I’m here. I’ll be here [Friday]. I’ll be here as long as it takes to get the job done.”
Madigan said a budget should have been done two years ago. In that time, the legislature passed either no budget or a budget that was billions of dollars out of balance.
After announcing she’s resigning from her post effective the first day of the new budget year, Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont, said a deal has to get done by tonight.
“There’s a lot of frustration out there. We need to keep our eye on the prize and that is getting a budget and reforms that will move our state forward,” Radogno said.
Gov. Bruce Rauner said if there’s no budget package by tonight, he’ll have to keep lawmakers in Springfield until it’s done.
Aside from a balanced budget, each side has various reform demands they’re still hashing out even though the budget deadline is at midnight tonight.
For his entire term, Rauner has insisted on economic and political reforms that he says will help turn the state’s economy around and improved its fiscal condition. The governor has walked a significant number of those reform requirements back and insists on a four-year property tax freeze with the ability to lower the state’s highest in the nation rates through local referendum, meaningful workers’ comp reforms, pension reform and government consolidation.
Radogno said lines have to be drawn somewhere.
“We have to prioritize what we want,” she said. “Nobody gets 100 percent, but what do you absolutely have to have.”
House Speaker Michael Madigan said he’s ready to compromise.
“I’m proposing to vote for things I don’t believe in,” he said.
But Madigan insists Democrats’ school funding reform measure be signed by Rauner, as well as a measure to provide oversight to a large Medicaid managed care contract and regulations on workers’ compensation rates that insurers charge businesses.
Madigan said he’ll call the Senate Democrats’ spending plan that House Democrats’ have amended to the floor for second reading today, but bills need three days of reading before passage. That measure relies on at least $5 billion in tax increases.
No other measures to either have a cuts-only budget or to give Rauner unilateral authority to make the cuts have advanced anywhere.
The next budget year begins Saturday.
