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Illinois lawmakers are racing to push through legislation to end a record-long budget impasse and avoid becoming the only U.S. state with a junk credit rating, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. Lawmakers are in session after the Democrat-run House of Representatives approved an income-tax increase with 15 Republican votes on Sunday, signaling bipartisan will to end the stalemate even though Governor Bruce Rauner (R) vowed to veto it if the measure clears the Senate. The House also sent a $36 billion spending plan to the Senate amid concern that credit-rating companies will pull Illinois’s investment-grade rating if a budget isn’t enacted. S&P Global Ratings called the weekend developments a “crucial step” toward ending the stalemate. Illinois has entered its third year without a budget because of a clash between the Republican governor and lawmakers over how to close the government’s chronic deficits. Unpaid bills have soared to a record $15 billion, and by August the state is set to run out of money for key expenses for the first time since the stalemate began, according to Comptroller Susana Mendoza, a Democrat.

A leading senator involved in efforts to reform the government’s relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said yesterday that he sees “commonality” within the housing finance sector on how lawmakers should alter the government-sponsored enterprises, MorningConsult.com reported. “What I see happening, right now, is a real consolidation of ideas,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said yesterday at Senate Banking Committee hearing. “It just seems to me that the thinking around what needs to happen on GSE reform is coming to a place where I truly believe we’re going to be able to pass a piece of legislation this year.” Corker has been active in the GSE debate for years and co-authored a reform measure with Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) that the Banking panel approved in 2014. He said he’s come to believe there’s agreement on the left and the right that a reform bill needs to include a paid-for and explicit, rather than implicit, government guarantee for catastrophic losses. Achieving that might be difficult for Republicans, Corker noted.

A new House Republican bill to fund the government includes key parts of the GOP Dodd-Frank replacement package the House passed this month, giving lawmakers another opportunity to try to put deregulatory legislation on President Trump's desk, the Washington Examiner reported yesterday. The fiscal 2018 financial services appropriations bill introduced by the House Appropriations Committee yesterday would extend Congress' control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and prevent it from regulating payday lenders, among other measures. The bill also would repeal the Volcker Rule that prevents banks from speculating with insured deposits and eliminate regulators' new power to regulate non-banks that they think could pose a threat to the financial system.