SPRINGFIELD - Gov. Pat Quinn took his case for a budgetary crash diet directly to state lawmakers Wednesday, pushing a grim assortment of prison closures and spending cuts in a spending plan that he said wasn't built around "budget fantasies" but rather "hard realities."

"I'm here today to tell you the truth," the governor said during a speech to a joint session of the General Assembly. "This budget contains truths that may not be what you want to hear. But these are truths that you do need to know."

With Illinois still deeply in the throes of a budget meltdown, the governor's proposed $33.8 billion spending plan - which is up 1.5 percent from last year - includes the painful closure or consolidation of 59 state facilities.

Chief among those closures is the super-maximum-security prison in far downstate Tamms, a 14-year-old prison that the American Civil Liberties Union described this week as a "vessel of human suffering and sinkhole for taxpayer dollars."

During his speech, Quinn also addressed the need to cut state spending on Medicaid services and pension costs for state workers and teachers, but only spoke in glancing references to the two multibillion-dollar spending pressures that have state government on the verge of paralysis.