Clarissa's Blog

So the Illinois Dems made every concession to Rauner, came up with a budget he has been demanding, conceded literally everything, and. . . of course, Rauner vetoed it. 

And finally, finally even some Republican legislators realized that Rauner is just fucking with them. He doesn’t want a budget, any budget. He wants to go on for a third year without one. To him, winning doesn’t mean ramming through his version of the budget. Winning means never coming up with a budget for the simple reason that his personal wealth grows as a result of Illinois not having a budget.

Once they finally realized they were being had by their own governor, 15 Republicans in the House broke ranks to override the veto. In the state Senate, a single Republican senator, Dale Righter, voted to override Rauner’ s veto. (Two Dem rats defected.) He has a large public university in his district, and that university is dying. Thank you, Senator Righter, for not being a partisan dick.

My admiration goes to the Dem speaker Mike Madigan who came up with the brilliant plan to reveal what Rauner was really about and fake agreed to every concession. He knew that Rauner would still veto even his own budget. That’s risky yet talented strategy needed to break the stalemate.

The House vote is on Thursday. Everybody who’s in Illinois, let’s bug our representatives to death on this. A budget is so close. Let’s fucking do this already!