There are lots of different angles to Governor Pat Quinn's highly controversial decision to unilaterally refuse to pay scheduled, contractual pay raises to unionized state employees, so let's take them one at a time.

• This is Not "New" News. Chicago reporters are the only ones with access to the governor these days. (Quinn has held just one Springfield press conference in months.) The city's reporters probably don't know that the House Republicans - and even some House Democrats - have been agitating since at least April to somehow stop AFSCME's scheduled pay raises.

Illinois Senate President John Cullerton has received a lot of bad press, sharp condemnation from Republicans, and even some quiet criticism from his own members over the past month.

But Cullerton made no apologies during an interview last week for the way his caucus sought to hold the state's public-works bill hostage by tacking on $430 million in additional budget items. The move was rejected by both parties in the House, by Senate Republicans, and even, in the end, by Governor Pat Quinn, who had pushed for additional spending all year. The General Assembly had to return to town last week so the Senate could officially back down from the spending and send a "clean" bill to the governor's desk.

The Senate President told me numerous times over the past several months that he believed he could convince House Speaker Michael Madigan - a fellow Democrat - to go along with his budget plans. In the end, however, Madigan stuck to a budget pact he'd made months earlier with House Republican Leader Tom Cross and beat back the Senate Democrats' plan. So what went wrong?

Illinois Senate President John Cullerton says he had a simple message for House Republican Leader Tom Cross in the waning hours of the spring legislative session: "See you in July."

As you probably know by now, Cullerton's Senate voted to add $430 million to the House's austere state spending plan. The Senate initially wanted to spend a billion dollars more than the House, but many of Cullerton's Democratic members demanded that they at least get something, so they came up with a list totaling $430 million.

House Speaker Michael Madigan couldn't agree to the additional spending unless Leader Cross also signed off, because the two had decided months earlier to stand together on the budget. Cross said he wouldn't agree to the additional Senate spending, even though Cullerton said he'd found a way to pay for it.

Shortly after Governor Pat Quinn introduced a budget this year that was way out of balance, called for even higher taxes, and increased state spending, the General Assembly decided to ignore him.

That was back in February. Things haven't changed much since then.

The governor's original budget proposal was just so out of sync with political and fiscal reality that pretty much everybody knew quickly that something different would have to be done. It wasn't long before House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton decided that the best way to pass a reasonable, realistic budget was to cut the governor out of the process and hand the budget-making responsibilities over to the legislative appropriations committees, with strict spending limits.