Right on cue, nearly 1,000 members of the Responsible Budget Coalition traveled to Springfield today to keep the heat on lawmakers. The coalition wants the General Assembly to face up to the consequences of adopting a deadbeat budget back in July that ignores $3.2 billion worth of today's bills and borrows $3.5 billion more against future revenues. "When it was passed, the legislature went home hoping the issue would  fall off the radar. Thinking maybe they'd done it. But it didn't fade and it couldn't fade because the damage is being done now," the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law's director John Bouman said at a pre-rally news conference today. Watch:

Calling the prospect of losing her home health care aide a "fright," Lee Gilbert --  a visually impaired senior citizen -- said "I am reaching out and begging the legislature to please, please stop the cuts." As we noted earlier this week, $18 million worth of those services will be eliminated by month's end. And with tax and gaming receipts continuing to tank, Gov. Pat Quinn's administration is warning that absent new revenue, additional cuts are just around the corner. "Next spring, if we don't get this fixed it could be 4,000 stories" of hardships like Gilbert's, Bouman says. Let's hope not.