Madigan joins Rauner in a race to the bottom of the public’s esteem

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Gov. Bruce Rauner and Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan. | Sun-Times photos

Mike Madigan finally showed up for the game but left his glove at home.

Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House, has been the missing man in Springfield for months. Senate Democrats approved a credible state budget last month, and Gov. Bruce Rauner has popped up now and then to demand this and that and a salad on the side. But Madigan has kept his own counsel, true to form.

EDITORIAL

Now, on Tuesday, the Speaker presented his own version of a state budget, a $36.4 billion spending plan that is exact in its details down to $443,000 for “Bully Prevention” services. Yet it is not a budget at all, only a list of proposed expenditures, because it includes no revenue plan, including higher taxes, to pay for this stuff.

The Legislature has three days left to pass a budget — for the first time in two years — during a 10-day special summer session that ends Saturday. But even now Madigan won’t take a stand on the hard stuff of raising taxes, though all sides know higher taxes are necessary. He’s too afraid of the political fallout to do his job.

Rauner and Madigan are in a race to see who can be held in lower esteem. Our inclination has been to put the lion’s share of the blame on the governor, who promised as a candidate to “shake up” Springfield and set our state right and not raises taxes. You can see how that’s worked out.

But then Madigan emerges, slightly more often than a groundhog late in winter, and we are reminded that both men have failed Illinois. Their refusal to find a way to work together is killing our state, which now has $15 billion in unpaid back bills. The interest paid for late payments alone this year has been $181 million.

Madigan has signaled he would accept a tax plan passed in May by the Senate Democrats. It would generate an additional $5.4 billion in revenue by raising the personal income tax rate from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent and the corporate income tax rate from 5.25 percent to 7 percent. But Madigan’s team also has said it has reservations about other parts of the revenue plan, such as expanding a tax on services. So we really don’t know what Madigan would accept.

Rauner has been equally spineless, saying he endorses a proposed House Republican budget that also generally accepts the Senate Democrats’ tax plan. But, like Madigan, Rauner and the GOP are insisting on what might be deal-breaking conditions, such as limiting the tax hike to four years.

If Rauner and Madigan were serious about ending the budget impasse, they could sign on to the budget package approved by the Senate in May. Though the Senate plan was passed with only Democratic votes, much of it was negotiated in a spirit of compromise over several months by Senate President John Cullerton and Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno.

If Rauner and Madigan fail to come to terms on a state budget this week, they will blame each other, and they both will be right.

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