* Gov. Quinn challenges Lisa Madigan to get in the game…

Quinn asked Democratic state officials to also take his side on the budget, in particular Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who’s been mulling a run for governor.

QUINN: If you want to run for governor or be governor, you gotta get in the arena. You can’t be on the sidelines.

* The SJ-R tells legislative Republicans to get off their duffs and help solve the budget problem…

Cut first, reform the budget process, then “discuss” new revenues. This is the Republican creed on Illinois’ two-year, $12 billion budget deficit. House Republican votes are needed to pass a budget that doesn’t massacre services and state employees by the fiscal year’s July 1 start.

This principle is reasonable if considered in a vacuum. But the impossibility of major budget reforms before the July deadline and the near certainty of layoffs and service cuts if it is blown make this an unreasonable stance. Legislators need to find the revenue now.

* Senate GOP Leader Christine Radogno compared Gov. Quinn to Rod Blagojevich and lit into him…

“He is trying to instill panic. I think that is cynical, I think it is morally unacceptable and it is very Rod Blagojevich-like. It is wrong, wrong, wrong and it doesn’t need to be happening,” Radogno said

But..

Radogno, however, did concede Friday that cutting the state budget alone will not come up with the cash needed to make ends meet. “Cuts are one piece of the puzzle and they may not be enough to entirely solve the problem,” she said

She also said she wants pension and Medicaid reform before considering a tax hike.

* I’ve been warning the governor’s people about this for weeks, but considered it a bit too tinfoil hatty for publication and deleted it from stories at least twice…

There are many theories floating around about how all of this will play out. Here’s one from an experienced Statehouse veteran that is intriguing.

July 1 comes and goes with Quinn and the four leaders agreeing to nothing. Quinn could accept the budget sent to him by lawmakers and try to stretch the spending through an entire year, slashing and hacking programs along the way. Or he could spend wildly to spare job losses and program cuts now and hope that something is resolved before the state runs completely out of money in January or February.

Under this scenario, the Legislature returns sometime after Christmas but before Jan. 15 and raises the income tax. That puts it after the deadline for people to file to run for the General Assembly. It also puts it just before the primary election, an election where we already know Quinn will have opponents, maybe even including the speaker’s daughter.

…Adding… Also, as I’ve told subscribers and column readers, this can’t be done without a lot of other legislation, which is another reason I’ve deleted it from stories that I was writing.

* My syndicated newspaper column takes a look ahead…

It’s tough to find people who truly believe that Gov. Pat Quinn will ultimately approve draconian budget cuts in the coming fiscal year in order to force a tax increase. But his people insist it’s coming, and the administrative planning appears to be moving forward with deliberate speed.

The governor has three choices:

• He could veto the budget approved by the General Assembly and force a showdown overtime session. The budget will fund only half of social service programs for next fiscal year. A veto would create an immediate confrontation, but it also would put him in the same sort of league with Rod Blagojevich, and Quinn doesn’t want or need that comparison. Plus, the overtime session could drag on for weeks as leaders try to put together another budget plan. And until there is a plan, Republicans will face no real pressure to act. Instead, they’ll get daily opportunities to bash Quinn and the Democrats.

• Quinn also is being urged to treat the “50 percent budget” as if it’s really a six-month budget. This plan would put off a vote on taxes until next year. But the governor’s office maintains that this can’t be done legally.

• The third option is to sign the budget into law as is, which will lead to horrific cuts. That’s the direction Quinn is heading. Yes, he has appeared to back off of some big fights. And, yes, he’s a deeply liberal and religious man who abhors the very idea of massive cuts, particularly the billions of dollars slashed from human service grant programs.

“I don’t believe in holding the Sword of Damocles over the heads of innocent people,” Quinn said last week.

But that mythical sword soon will become all too real. At least two state prisons reportedly are on the chopping block. Thousands of state employees could be laid off if the union doesn’t agree to other cutbacks. Quinn said last week that the cuts to private human service agency grants alone would result in 200,000 job losses.

Quinn will have to hope that the threat of doom will be enough to move legislators to action. “I’m disappointed that we aren’t having enough urgency,” Quinn said. Urgency assuredly will hit the fan soon.

Threats alone may not work. Legislators have heard doomsday warnings for years and nothing has ever come of it. Late last year, many were predicting a government shutdown by spring because the legislature had adjourned with a $2 billion-plus deficit and revenues were tanking right along with the economy. A shutdown never happened.

Once they’ve been around for a while, legislators realize that almost everybody they deal with is always in crisis mode: If the state doesn’t do “X,” then catastrophe is certain. But those catastrophes never seem to come.

Quinn’s first attempt at threatening doomsday last month was met with yawns. The bottom line was nobody took him seriously. They still don’t.

Quinn appeared to run from a fight with the teachers and public employee unions when he succumbed way too soon on a plan to force workers to pay more into their pension plans.

The lifelong reformer has been excoriated by reform groups for “caving” to the old bulls on campaign finance reform.

If you look weak in this business, you are weak.

His repeated homilies to the poor and outcast make people believe he won’t play a role in their devastation. Therefore, his warnings probably won’t work.

The governor should reread Cicero’s story about that infamous sword. The actual lesson is that the powerful are not as happy as they seem because they are under constant, perilous threat.

“There can be nothing happy for the person over whom some fear always looms,” Cicero explained.

Quinn has been on the outside mocking insiders all his adult life, and now he’s gotten what he always wanted and is on top of the heap, only to look up and see a gigantic sword dangling by a thread over his head. The peasant Damocles had envied the king’s power, but he panicked and fled at the sight of the sword hanging above the throne.

In the coming days, we’re going to find out what Quinn is really made of.

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* Is the sky really falling this time, governor?

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* Sharing the pain

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