A high stakes game of "chicken" between Senate Democrats and the rest of the General Assembly has prompted Governor Quinn to call for a special legislative session.

When the Senate adjourned on May 31 without backing down from $430 million in add-ons to the bipartisan budget adopted by the Illinois House, it left the state's road and capital construction program in jeopardy.

On Monday, June 6, Governor Quinn said he'll call legislators back to Springfield before June 17 to take up the state's construction program. The Governor issued a warning that failure to approve the construction program could force layoffs of 52,000 people in the construction industry.

To put that in perspective, the Governor said just 54,000 jobs were created last month in the entire country.

At issue is the effort by majority Democrats in the Senate to add nearly a half a billion dollars to the state budget by filing a hostile amendment to HB 2189, the annual construction and road appropriation. In the House, Speaker Michael Madigan refused to accept the Senate add-ons and sent the measure back to the Senate asking that body to "recede" or withdraw from the hostile amendment.

Although the Speaker's request was received in the Senate before that chamber adjourned, no motion to remove the add-on spending was filed and instead, the Senate adjourned without taking up the proposal. That left the state's annual road and capital construction program without needed legal authority to proceed.

The construction program is the least controversial portion of the state budget and Senate Republicans will work with their House colleagues from both parties to get the unrelated spending removed so that a "clean" construction program can be approved.