Rauner agreed to sign off on an income tax increase, and expand the sales tax to include some services if the legislature would accept some of his ‘turn-around’ agenda, especially reforms to workmen’s compensation. 

 

His budget outline, which would include cuts along with the tax hikes would come close to closing the gaping budget hole the state now faces, and sounds similar to the so-called ‘Grand Bargain’ proposed earlier by senate leadership. 

 

Jak Tichener, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy institute at SIU says if there is a deal, it will have to be based on the ‘Grand Bargain’ coming out of the senate.

 

 

Tichener says he is more optimistic of a breakthrough than at any time in the past two years.

 

 

Each day the state continues without a budget, bond ratings plummet, bills go unpaid and interest and service charges grow by millions of dollars a day.