Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger said last week that state government's backlog of unpaid bills will hit $8.5 billion by the end of December, up from about $6 billion right now.

That's a headline-grabbing number, since the end of December is not exactly the greatest time for people and companies that are owed money by the state. The state's bill backlog was about $8 billion this past January, right after most of the 2011 state-income-tax hike expired. But the backlog fell to $3.5 billion by the end of July, and just $2.3 billion of those bills were more than 30 days overdue.

But let's take a look at another estimate Comptroller Munger released last week. The comptroller totaled state spending from last fiscal year that isn't currently being mandated by federal and state court decrees (Medicaid bills, state employee and judicial salaries, etc.), continuing appropriations (bond and pension payments, legislative salaries), signed appropriations bills (K-12 education), and other things, and came up with $4.3 billion.

The $4.3 billion is the total amount that was paid out last year but is not currently being sent to colleges and universities, state-employee health-care providers, non-Medicaid social-service providers, MAP Grant college-student-aid recipients, and lottery winners over $25,000, plus various "transfers out," including to local governments for things such as motor-fuel-tax distributions.

Eventually, that money will have to be paid in full or in part, or significant portions of the state are gonna be in a big world of hurt.

The Illinois fiscal crisis is only going to get worse, and the solution is becoming more difficult by the day.

As you probably know, the General Assembly and the governor have not yet agreed on a full state budget. But because of various federal judicial orders, a signed education-funding bill, and several ongoing statutory "continuing appropriations" (debt service, pension payments, legislative salaries, etc.), the government is on pace to spend billions of dollars more than it will bring in this fiscal year.

Guesstimates have been tossed around by various folks that the state could run out of money by March or maybe April if no formal budget agreement is reached. That's because all the judicial orders etc. are based on last fiscal year's budget, but last year's budget was based on revenue from a 5-percent income tax - which automatically fell to 3.75 percent in January.

Long term is grim, but so is the short term.

The absurd facade of this long-running state-government impasse might best be summed up with two brief statements.

(1) Governor Bruce Rauner to Democrats: Just support my plans to eviscerate organized labor and I'll give you the rare privilege of voting to raise everybody's income taxes.

(2) Democrats to Rauner: Just accept our piddly little workers' compensation reforms and we'll let you put all Republican legislators on an income-tax-hike bill, which you can then, of course, gleefully sign into law.

Those two statements bring to mind a long-ago description of the play Waiting for Godot. It was, the reviewer wrote, a play in which "nothing happens, twice."

Ain't that the truth. Neither of these things will ever happen.

I have heard some portray this standoff as something like a religious war, in which each side is so wedded to their own core belief structures - particularly when it comes to labor unions (Rauner against, Democrats for) - that all rapprochement is impossible.

But as hard-line as the summer has most certainly appeared, I am increasingly convinced that this overtime session isn't quite as simple as either of those comparisons.

If there were any doubt before last week, there's zero uncertainty now: Governor Bruce Rauner won't allow anyone else to interfere with his dominance of the Illinois Republican Party.

When the party was out of power for 12 years, several independent actors were always trying to influence elections from behind the scenes, elbowing people out, putting people in. This is a diverse state, and the party has numerous factions, both economic and social. All of those factions have de facto leaders.

One of those independent actors has been Ron Gidwitz, a moderate, wealthy business executive and one-time gubernatorial candidate with a network that includes lots of his rich friends. He ran the moneyed wing of the party.

Gidwitz used his and his friends' money to boost candidates who were to his liking. He backed Senator Kirk Dillard for governor in 2010, for instance, then switched his allegiance to Bruce Rauner four years later. That move did more to hurt Dillard than it did to help the mainly self-funding Rauner, because it totally dried up Dillard's money, leaving him unable to effectively compete until organized labor finally entered the race on his behalf.

After months of public silence, Gidwitz re-emerged last week. Sources say he has been bad-mouthing U.S. Senator Mark Kirk behind the scenes for quite a while. A recent Michael Sneed item in the Chicago Sun-Times about an anonymous top Republican who wanted Kirk to step down from the Senate was widely pinned on him.