Last July, lawmakers overrode Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto, passing a $36.5 billion budget that took an additional $5 billion from taxpayers and ended a more than two-year standoff between the freshman governor demanding pro-business reforms and Democrats in the General Assembly, who passed a budget with the help of a handful of defecting Republicans.

 

The final vote tallies were slim, but Democrats passed the budget Rauner said in his veto message included “no changes to create jobs and grow our economy. It will push more families and businesses out of our state.”

 

On the House Floor, Democrats and Republicans who crossed their politically allied governor extolled the virtues of creating stability for the state’s educational institutions and averting the dubious title of “first junk-rated state” while raising the money to keep social service providers open and paying down billions of dollars in backlogged bills.

 

State Rep. David Harris (R-Arlington Heights) told his colleagues on the House floor that there was no joy in voting for a tax increase, but “how long can this impasse go on? We all understand where we are. We’re looking into a financial abyss.”

 

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