By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
As part of his 2023 budget plan, Gov. Pritzker wants to freeze gas taxes, suspend the grocery tax and give property tax rebates. But if inflation continues at its current pace, Pritzker’s proposed “tax relief” would be eaten up by rising prices in less than a month.
The Wall Street Journal reported that inflation is costing the average U.S. household an additional $276 a month. Apply that to Illinois’ 4.86 million households and you get $1.34 billion in higher monthly costs. That entirely wipes out Pritzker’s proposed full-year of relief.
Illinois families are being hit hard by the highest inflation in 40 years. Overall prices nationally are up 7.5 percent over the year and many typical family staples have skyrocketed far more.
Beef prices are up 16 percent year-over-year. Eggs cost 13 percent more. Fruit is up 8 percent. Coffee, 9 percent. Natural gas for home utilities is up 24 percent. And the cost of gasoline and used cars are up a whopping 40 percent.
Gov. Pritzker’s concern about the damaging impact of inflation is ironic seeing as he helped bring about the current rate of spiraling prices. The governor was a major cheerleader of the federal government’s massive aid and trillion-dollar bailouts – key drivers of today’s inflation.
Wirepoints warned this would happen from the beginning. Illinois got its billions in aid, and now Illinoisans are paying the price through inflation.
- Jump in inflation bails out Illinois politicians, punishes ordinary residents
- The states’ 2020 financials are in: Biden’s billions in new federal aid aren’t needed
- Five reasons why Gov. Pritzker’s gas tax “relief” isn’t relief at all
- The Dialogue – Episode 21: Dissecting Pritzker’s “balanced” budget
- Juiced Up Budgets In Other States Attributed To Federal Aid, But Pritzker Claims Credit In Illinois
With $162 billion more from taxpayers, couldn’t you deliver a few bond upgrades, too
Audio and summary 
A largely unasked question is becoming glaring: Is Illinois doing all it should to use artificial intelligence to make government cost less and work better? So far, the evidence says no.
Pritzker is a chronic liar using the tax payer dollars to benefit himself.
I will grant that cost increases seem to be running at 6.8% annually, and since wages are only growing between 3 and 4 percent that means real wages are going down for most workers. But look at this story…. https://www.businessinsider.com/inflation-monopolies-mega-corporations-inflating-high-prices-antitrust-2022-2 So by using inflation and the pandemic as an excuse to raise prices and make higher and higher profits, corporations are making inflation worse across the world https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/24/inflation-has-risen-around-the-world-but-the-u-s-has-seen-one-of-the-biggest-increases/ So I don’t see how one governor in one state can fix this: “Beef prices are up 16 percent year-over-year. Eggs cost 13 percent more. Fruit is up 8 percent. Coffee, 9 percent.… Read more »
There’s probably some mega-corporations raising rates because they can but there are also major supply chain issues that occur when only one company or one country controls supply. Microchips out of Taiwan, China controls a lot of the precursors for fertilizer (they stopped exporting months ago), and for pharmaceutical, and other third world countries supply parts for trucks that can’t run because they can’t get critical supplies, it’s like this with everything, Matt Stoller covered this a few months ago. There’s no longer any back-up suppliers because they’ve all been gobbled up by Mega Corp. As for Pritzker this one… Read more »
JB is tied to Biden in many ways, because the mid-terms are approval of a party in power. And Biden has a 53% disapproval rating right now, and only a 40.6% approval, which is basically Trump territory, and we remember what happened in Nov of 2018 in the midterms blowout as every where in IL went blue.
Many of those seats were merely rented, and may go back to being red.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president-biden-job-approval-7320.html
Though I am highly in favor of the Freedom Convoy in Canada and the US version kicking off in March, watch inflation spike even more as a result of these actions. Blocking the Ambassador Bridge near Detroit halts about 25% of trade between our two countries. Be prepared for higher prices across many more products.
While I would love a trucker convoy, but it won’t happen here. Anarchy would break out in the inner cities when the food deliveries stop for two or three days.
yea,what would the inner city people do with thier Linc Cards?
That may be a spurious correlation.
Inflation had already kicked into high gear.
Furthermore, trucker shortages due to vax mandates were already causing shortages, thus Inflation, prior to convoy.
How ironic, and how typical, of those whose policies start the problems to blame those who protest their policies.
JB conveniently forgot about inflation when he structured the Fair Tax. Well, it was convenient for him.
1 I don’t believe he is going to lower anything.
2 He is lying
3 His constituency lives on the merits of taxes throwing food into the trough that they eat at…he will not turn his back on them
I think it would be eaten up in much less than one month. More like two weeks. The chart says natural gas went up 24% which is not even close. Nicor gas was 68 cent per therm this year vs 29 cent last year for the same time Dec/Jan-61 cent for Jan and now 55 cent for Feb. So that was a 2.34 times increase or 136% from last on average not 24%. Peoples Gas was 55 cent per therm. Many heating bills were over $400 now include auto fuel prices over last year-typical grocery per week is easily $50… Read more »
Heating is double, last year it cost $70 to heat this place in January, just got the bill for $145 and the terms used last year are pretty much the same as this year for January.
Bidenflation at work. Don’t feel sorry for anyone who voted for this guy. It was obvious what would happen. The media sold the ordinary folks on Orange Man bad.
I have zero respect for anyone that voted for Biden. Nothing a Biden voter says or does means anything to me. I casually tell Biden voters I know that they have a lot of explaining to do..