On WTTW's Chicago Tonight last Thursday, a handful of lawmakers convened for yet another roundtable on the state's financial crisis. As the Trib and the Daily Herald both reported today, the fallout from the mounting deficit continues to grow. With each passing day, more schools, non-profits, and other state vendors join the list of organizations that are on the cusp of folding because state reimbursements are indefinitely delayed. Inexplicably, lawmakers appear poised to return to Springfield tomorrow ready to ignore the mounting financial crisis. But as Ralph Martire with the Center on Tax and Budget Accountability tells the Herald, the day of reckoning has come. "They can't beg, borrow, or steal their way around" the nearly $13 billion deficit, he says.

That sentiment was echoed by the Democratic lawmakers on WTTW last week. State Sen. Donnie Trotter, the upper chamber's unofficial "budgeteer," and State Rep. Greg Harris, the House liaison for the Responsible Budget Coalition, did their darndest to drive home Martire's point that there's simply no way the state can cut its way out of the growing deficit -- as their Republican colleagues continue to suggest.

"You can cut everything we do in education, in health care, human services, and public health, and still have a deficit the size we have," Harris said. "We have to have a combination of common-sense cuts, we have to bring in new revenues ... We have to all get on the same page. " Watch:

Meanwhile, Trotter lamented "the lack of political will" in Springfield and accused his more hesitant colleagues of "abdicating their responsibilities as lawmakers." Pointing out the promise of State Sen. James Meeks' (D-Chicago) HB 174, Trotter added, "We have the ability to do something about the dilemma we're in." Watch:

The WTTW segment opens with a look into the bind that the state has put agencies caring for seniors and the disabled by pushing off what's now grown to a staggering $5.1 billion in reimbursements. It's certainly worth watching, as well.