SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) – The Illinois Senate endorsed a $5 billion income tax increase Tuesday and a $36 billion spending plan designed to begin digging Illinois out of the nation’s longest state-budget deadlock since at least the Great Depression.
The Democratic-controlled Senate provided three-fifths majorities on both votes. The tax increase passed 36-18, just enough to send the measure to Gov. Bruce Rauner, and enough to override the veto the Republican has promised.
“We are at a moment in time. We are faced today with the fierce urgency of ‘now,'” said the tax increase legislation’s sponsor, Sen. Toi Hutchinson of Olympia Fields. “We don’t have any more time. And too late is not good enough.”
The Senate followed with a 39-14 vote to approve a $36 billion spending plan that Democrats have crowed is $1 billion less than even Rauner floated last winter.
Tuesday was the fourth day of the third consecutive fiscal year that Illinois has begun without an annual budget agreement because of an ongoing dispute between Rauner and the Democrats. He has insisted that in exchange for a funding plan, he should secure business-friendly “structural” changes, such as cost-reducing restrictions on the compensation program for injured workers and state-employee pensions. He wanted a four-year statewide property tax freeze matched by a temporary income tax increase.