By Greg Bishop/Illinois Radio Network

SPRINGFIELD – Gov. Bruce Rauner says Democrats complaining his administration’s agency heads aren’t offering up cuts is an attempt at putting his administration in a trick bag.

It’s no secret Illinois continues to deficit spend without a budget.

Democratic State Rep. Greg Harris says members of his party are frustrated that various administrative agencies haven’t offered up substantive cuts.

“How is the state ever going to get out of its financial mess if neither the governor nor his key leaders can’t identify one nickel of savings?” Harris asked.

Rauner said Democrats are trying to play gotcha politics.

“They’ve made it clear they don’t want to have any cuts at all and then they say, ‘governor, go list a bunch of cuts to get everybody upset, and then we’ll just attack you for it and, of course, we’ll just ignore it and not do the cuts,’ and that just doesn’t make sense,” Rauner said.

Instead, Rauner advocates for either a balanced budget with reforms in an effort to grow the economy or for the ability of his administration to make the cuts necessary to balance the budget.

Lawmakers shot that idea down in a Senate committee last week.

“If he was afraid of the job of governing then perhaps he should not have ran for the job of governor. This is his job, so do it,” Harris said.

But Rep. Sara Jimenez said the cuts are not up to the governor. She said the ball is the the legislature’s court.

“The way that it works is, we have to pass a bill and that’s not been something that the legislature has done in a complete way, a balanced way, in a couple of years now,” she said. “We really need to focus in on doing that.”

Jimenez said lawmakers need to stop over-promising and address court-ordered spending that has the state spending millions more a day than it’s bringing in.

The state hasn’t had a full year’s spending plan in nearly 21 months.