* We’re taking next week off, so here’s my weekly syndicated newspaper column in advance…

Gov. JB Pritzker said last week that the extreme uncertainty with the US government and the international economy might mean that the legislature may have to reconvene to reconfigure the state budget after it adjourns at the end of next month.

“It may very well be that we’re going to have to come back at some point, depending on what the president does,” Pritzker said during an unrelated press conference.

Later, a spokesperson said that Pritzker meant that he and his administration don’t know what President Donald Trump is going to do in the near future, and “what the impact is going to be yet, so we have to be ready for everything.” The spokesperson said there were “no concrete plans” as of now to return this summer, fall or winter, “that I’m aware of.” Another top Pritzker official played down the governor’s remarks.

But there’s little doubt that the state could be in for a very rough fiscal road.

President Donald Trump is unilaterally slashing federal agency budgets, along with funding for state and local governments, while imposing unprecedented import taxes, which have combined to worry state budget-makers throughout the country and have tanked international financial markets, leading some top banks to predict a coming recession, or worse. In the past, sudden economic plunges have forced the General Assembly into special sessions.

When asked if he was still confident in his administration’s revenue and spending projections for the coming fiscal year, Pritzker said, “It’s hard to tell from one day to another.” Pritzker’s revenue projections have been criticized for being $737 million higher than predicted by the legislature’s bipartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability.

“You’ve seen what DOGE proposed, what Elon Musk proposed,” Pritzker said. “We don’t know if there’s going to be Medicaid cuts, which would have a severe impact on the people of the state and on our budget,” the governor said of the current DC scene. “I think those who are responsible and want to pass a balanced [state] budget, is that we’re going to have to live this, you know, circumstance of the uncertainties of the federal government every day, and watch how it turns out, and we’re probably going to be living that even through the course of the fiscal year ahead.”

I also asked if the upcoming state budget plan might include more spending latitude via lump sum appropriations, to give the administration more flexibility in the next fiscal year’s spending plan. This approach has been taken in previous years to give governors the ability to handle extreme fiscal uncertainty.

“No more latitude than in the past,” Pritzker said. “I think at the moment we’re still working that out, of course, but I think the reality is that this is, no doubt, one of the most challenging budget years, and it’s not because of a lack of revenue. That’s not something we’re seeing yet, but it is the reality that we just don’t know,” Pritzker said, pointing to the “chaos that’s coming from Washington, DC and from this administration in particular.”

My associate Isabel Miller also asked the governor a question: “You said in your budget address that if people want money for new programs, they’d have to give you a list of cuts they’d like to see. Has anyone brought you a list of cuts?”

“People aren’t showing up at my door with proposed cuts,” the governor said in response, after a bit of hesitation because he apparently didn’t expect that question. “But then again, I think they understand that any increases that they’re going to propose, whatever it is that I’m signing, we’re going to have to make this budget balance.”

Asked why he thought people weren’t laying out cuts to balance their proposed spending increases, Pritzker said, “I think there are many members of the legislature who don’t want to have to cut any programs, and only want to have to add, or have the ability to add. And I understand the desire to do that, but the reality is what it is, we have to balance the budget in the state. You know, revenues appear to be as we were expecting they would be, and so we’re going to have to, you know, make it all work one way or another, and that means balancing expenditures with the revenues.”

Later in the week, Pritzker pointed to his remarks when asked about easing the state’s estate tax. Proponents, he said, need to show how they can pay for it.