By John Dempsey, WLS-AM News

(CHICAGO)  Bloomington Republican State Senator Bill Brady is blasting Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, saying Madigan wants to “obstruct” progress towards ending the Illinois budget crisis.

​Brady told “The Big John and Ramblin’ Ray Show” on WLS, that Madigan is not seriously invested in ending the crisis, which has been going on for two and a half years.

“It’s indicative that Mike Madigan clearly just doesn’t want to deliver a real solution.   He continues to obstruct the progress here and if he wants a solution there’s been one on the table”, said Brady. “Right now Speaker Madigan is backing off of Democratic concessions that were given to us in May, and obstructing, completely obstructing, and creating a real meltdown that’s gonna be very harmful.”

Brady is referring to compromises made between Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats that were made without Madigan’s input.    Senate Democrats passed a budget that

would boost revenue by $5.5 billion by permanently raising the income tax rate to 4.95 percent from 3.75 percent and the corporate tax to 7 percent from 5.25 percent.  The plan would also expand the state sales tax to services such as dry cleaning.    However no Republicans voted for that Senate plan.

On Tuesday, Madigan presented his budget proposal.  It spends nearly $36.5 billion, which is less  that Republicans want to spend, but the Madigan plan is not specific on exactly how the revenue would be raised to pay for those expenditures.

Senator Brady tells WLS that Madigan does not truly want a solution.

“Mike Madigan wants a meltdown.  He doesn’t want a real solution or he would realize all the work in a bi-partisan fashion that went into that.   But I do believe Republican and Democratic votes are available and the Governor will sign the package that we’ve put forward that moves the state forward.”

@ 2017 WLS-AM News