State Senator Dale Righter is suggesting that Speaker Michael Madigan’s motives for delaying a budget deal are political. The current state stopgap budget is set to expire at the end of the month. While Governor Rauner and party leaders have met several times, little progress has been made towards a budget deal. Righter said that the Speaker Madigan simply doesn’t want one.
“I fully believe that the speaker’s strategy is to continue for the next two years what we’ve seen for the last two years and then when Governor Rauner may be up for reelection in 2018, point to him and say ‘hey, this guy can’t lead. We haven’t had a budget since he’s been in office, we’ve got to get someone new’ and that really unfortunate,” the senator remarked.
Senator Righter discusses Speaker Madigan’s motives.
Righter called the speaker’s continued actions damaging, with the ultimate goal of executing a political strategy.
Legislative barriers also stand in the way of the budget deal. Righter mentioned that the foremost sticking issue was simply making a balanced budget. He said that the state cannot keep spending more money than it takes in.
A second major issue is worker’s compensation reform. According to the senator, Democrats are on board, but only to a point. “If you talk to a lot of rank and file Democrat members they’ll tell you, yeah they understand we need to balance the budget and we need some economic reforms. They get it,” Righter said. The problem, according to him, is that Democrats won’t cross Speaker Madigan.
Senator Righter comments on Democrats and economic reforms.