{"id":315711,"date":"2017-07-03T22:32:43","date_gmt":"2017-07-03T21:32:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/illinois-threatened-with-junk-credit-rating-scrambles-to-solve-budget-crisis\/"},"modified":"2017-07-03T22:32:43","modified_gmt":"2017-07-03T21:32:43","slug":"illinois-threatened-with-junk-credit-rating-scrambles-to-solve-budget-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/illinois-threatened-with-junk-credit-rating-scrambles-to-solve-budget-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Illinois threatened with 'junk' credit rating scrambles to solve budget crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Illinois lawmakers are rushing to push through legislation to end a record-long budget stalemate and to avoid becoming the only US state with a junk bond credit rating. The state has nearly $272 billion in outstanding bills and unfunded pensions.<\/p>\n

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State senators were locked in session Monday, after the Democrat-controlled House approved a 32 percent income-tax hike and a $36 billion spending plan.<\/p>\n

The tax legislation increases the personal income tax rate from 3.75 percent to just under 5 percent, while corporations would pay 7 percent instead of 5.25 percent.<\/p>\n

S&P Global Ratings said the House vote to raise $5 billion through an income tax increase \u201crepresents a meaningful step towards the enactment of a comprehensive budget,\u201d <\/em>according to<\/a>\u00a0Bloomberg.<\/p>\n

Governor Bruce Rauner (R-Illinois) vowed in a Facebook post to veto the tax increase if it clears the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIllinois families don\u2019t deserve to have more of their hard-earned money taken from them when the legislature has done little to restore confidence in government or grow jobs,\u201d<\/em> Rauner said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cIllinois families deserve more jobs, property tax relief and term limits. But tonight they got more of the same.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Illinois lawmakers have been meeting at the Capitol for the last two weeks in an effort to end the gridlock between the Democrat-controlled legislature and the Republican governor.<\/p>\n

Fifteen Republicans broke with Rauner to join 57 Democrats in voting for the tax hike. A dozen Republicans were from parts of Illinois where many of its public universities, prisons and other state facilities are located, according to<\/a> the Chicago Tribune.<\/p>\n

Rauner, who in 2015 became the first Republican to lead the state in more than a decade, wants any spending plan to include some of the agenda that he says he was elected to enact \u2013 a property-tax freeze, legislative term limits and changes to the workers\u2019 compensation insurance system to cut costs for businesses.<\/p>\n

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Read more<\/p>\n


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Democrats, led by Speaker of the House Michael Madigan, have resisted, saying those changes would hurt the middle class.<\/p>\n

Credit rating agencies have been threatening the state with junk bond credit rating over its unpaid bills and $251 billion in unfunded pensions.<\/p>\n

On June 1, S&P and Moody\u2019s Investors Service both dropped the state\u2019s rating to one level above junk. S&P has said that without a spending plan that addresses the deficit around July 1 \u2012 the start of the new budget year \u2012 Illinois would get downgraded again.<\/p>\n

The state has been without a budget for two years, with a $6.2 billion deficit and backlogged bills of $14.7 billion. Public universities risk losing their accreditation, social service providers could close their doors, and layoffs of road construction workers could be imminent. The prospect of a downgrade would also spike the cost of borrowing credit and could spook investors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published time: 3 Jul, 2017 21:08 Edited time: 3 Jul, 2017 21:08 Illinois lawmakers are rushing to push through legislation to end a record-long budget stalemate and to avoid becoming the only US state with a junk bond credit rating. The state has nearly $272 billion in outstanding bills and unfunded pensions. State senators were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":315712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-315711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}