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Article snippet: CHICAGO — After more than two years of political sparring, missed payments to creditors and plunging credit ratings, Illinois did on Thursday what most states do every year. It finished a budget. Yet as some lawmakers and state officials cheered an end to the longest state budget impasse in the nation’s modern history, at least one prominent and unyielding critic remained. Gov. Bruce Rauner, a Republican who has clashed with the Democratic-held Legislature since the moment he took office, had vetoed the spending plan, which includes a tax increase. The governor doubled down on his disgust even as at least 10 members of his own party joined Democrats to override his veto, ending the standoff. “This is a two-by-four smacked across the foreheads of the people of Illinois,” he said this week, imploring fellow Republicans to stand by him. “This tax hike will solve none of our problems and in fact, long run, it’ll just make our problems worse.” The narrow veto override in the state House, with exactly the 71 votes that were needed, ended a stalemate that had gone on so long that Illinois had fallen $15 billion behind on bills and been warned that its credit rating might fall to junk status, worse than any other state. It was a defeat for Mr. Rauner, a former private-equity executive who had never held political office before he promised to “shake up Springfield” and was elected governor in 2014. As a crusading conservative in a Democratic state with deep financial woes... Link to the full article to read more