Nine months into a stalemate that's left Illinois without a budget ... Governor Bruce Rauner Tuesday let loose on House Speaker Michael Madigan.
State senators are meeting in Springfield this week. But members of the Illinois House? They're not scheduled to return to the Capitol until April.
Rauner calls that "outrageous."
"Speaker Madigan would rather go on vacation. He'd rather have his caucus, the Democrats in the House, go on vacation - for a month - while this crisis brews. That's a dereliction of duty. That's a failure of Speaker Madigan and his caucus to do their jobs. We're in the middle of a budget crisis. We're in the middle of a higher education funding crisis. We're in the middle of a MAP grant funding crisis and they leave town with no solutions."
That's typical of Rauner's anti-Madigan rhetoric, but there's an irony in his call for more meetings of the
House. Whenever they're in session, Democrats have forced the governor's Republican allies to cast politically tough votes.
Madigan's spokesman calls Rauner's comments "embarrassing," given that the House schedule has been out for months. He says the governor hasn't called Madigan for a private meeting since December.