CHICAGO — Illinois, a state with a reputation for political wheeling and dealing, back room handshakes, and 11th-hour bargains, desperately needs a deal to solve its biggest financial crisis in a generation.

Lawmakers will convene again the first week in January in hopes of fixing the nation’s worst case of underfunding state employees’ pensions, a problem approaching $100 billion and mounting by $17 million per day. On the table are solutions that other states adopted as long as five years ago.