“This means every Democrat now running for a legislative seat should have to answer this question: ‘Will you vote Yea or Nay if the Pritzker administration demands yet another big rise in the income tax?'”

When asked, though, neither Rep. Tom Demmer, R-Dixon, nor House Republican Leader Jim Durkin identified where cuts to the budget should be made nor how much.

“For the record, I am not exercising my Fifth Amendment rights by not appearing before the Committee. As I have said before, I have done nothing wrong.”

“It is doctors and epidemiologists that are leading the way here,” Pritzker said. “It is what I have done all along in this pandemic. I think it’s one of the reasons we have one of the lowest positivity rates in the Midwest.”

Because of the ongoing federal probe, Madigan said, “the need to ensure that the federal investigation runs its course without interference or distraction, I do not believe I can provide testimony before the Committee at this time.”

David Ernesto Munar, president and CEO of Howard Brown Health, said that health center saw a 70 percent drop in its in-person visits due to the stay-at-home order that was in place during the early months of the pandemic. And while he said that was necessary to control the spread of the disease, it cut deeply into the clinic’s regular revenue stream,

On top of added stress for parents, closing schools for COVID-19 could cost an estimated $700 billion in lost revenue and productivity, according to a report in Barron’s.

A separate analysis of all states by Ballotpedia found Illinois’ statehouse was the fifth-worst state for competitive races in the 2020 election.

U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood and Adam Schuster, of the Illinois Policy Institute: “Illinois’ spending on pensions has grown by over 500% in the past two decades while spending on social services for the poor has dropped by one-third. Requests to throw more money into that black hole cannot solve the problem, but real reform can. We can’t support a system that prioritizes spending on debt and pensions over people.”

“There are three choices that people have,” Pritzker said. “Either you’re going see a 20% increase meaning one full percentage point increase in order to cover that structural deficit…or you’re going see a 15% cut in government, in our budget, which would significantly reduce education funding at the state level, increase property taxes in the state, and would reduce public funding for our safety.”

“When you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a risk-taker,” said one restaurant owner. “You’re a dream-maker. You want things to happen. But at what point do you have to realize that it’s just not going to work? Do you cut your losses and say, ‘OK, I’m going to try to hold onto this one but let something else go?’ It’s like, ‘Which child do you save?’”

Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel, executive director of Illini Chabad, said his organization was “deeply disappointed” by the action taken by student government group and said it should be called out for what it is, anti-Semitism and a “BDS vote…Fighting for the rights of one marginalized community should not come at the expense of another marginalized group.”

Beinot Casanova, a Chicago Transit Authority worker, is seeking a refund of fees she paid to the union from 2016 through 2018. The lead plaintiff in the Janus case, Mark Janus, is also seeking a refund of fees taken from his paycheck as far back as 2013. Both cases will be considered Oct. 9.

COVID-19 quickly deepened long-standing cracks in the local health care system and is pushing already struggling hospitals to the brink.