Atty Gen Lisa call Gov Bruce's bluff

In asking an Illinois court to stop payments to state workers absent a state budget, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has called Gov. Rauner's bluff in his cynical 18 month campaign to degrade the Illinois social safety net in favor of the business elite. Lisa argues such payments are illegal and must stop March 1. If successful, Rauner's ploy to keep the state operating, in spite of drastic cuts to state universities, needy students and non-profit public service providers will end, forcing him to abandon his use of non-budgetary items as extortion in the budgetary process. Rauner touts his efforts as an end to 'business as usual' in Illinois; ignoring that his trick of paying state workers without a budget while stiffing the students, the needy, the powerless, the marginalized, is simply 'business as usual' for a greedy venture capitalist.  

Gov. Rauner provoked an unconscionable crisis for the most vulnerable Illinoisans with his scheme to widen the gap between the haves and have nots. Degrading state services to the needy, stopping critical educational and infrastructure investment, signaling the critically needed capital markets Illinois is not in the game, is a governing catastrophe unprecedented in Illinois history. Rauner has been able to maintain this twisted 18 month long saga through a dubious legal maneuver that pretends Illinois is functioning under a budget when it isn't. The Attorney General's move may finally get the judiciary to pull the plug on the bathtub in which Gov. Rauner is drowning Illinois.