By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
It looks like the next attempt at an Illinois tax hike may well be on its way given Gov. Pritzker’s recent walk-back of his “no tax increase” comments.
Rich Miller’s Capitol Fax blog recently reported the governor’s change of tune: Pritzker goes from saying last week “the state should not resort to tax increases” to balance the budget, to now saying “taxes should not be the first, but rather the last resort.”
That change of tune matters. In case you haven’t been paying attention, here’s a quick summary of why the governor and his Democratic supermajorities might attempt another tax hike.
Reason number one: The free federal covid money has run out and the governor is trapped by all the spending promises he’s made going forward. Check out how much spending has spiked since he took office in 2019 and how much more he wants to spend over the next five years.
As a result, the state is suddenly going from “balanced budgets” to yearly deficits of $3 billion to $5 billion. Gov. Pritzker’s own budget team predicts a total $23 billion shortfall through 2030.
That’s quite the mess for a governor who’s constantly touted his success at turning the state around and getting credit upgrades. For more details, read: Even more evidence Illinois can thank the federal government’s covid bailouts for its budget bonanza and Pritzker admin’s past and future spending excesses mean $23 billion in upcoming deficits
Another reason: spending on illegal immigrants. We recently reported that healthcare coverage for illegal immigrants over the last 2.5 years has cost $1.5 billion in total. All paid for 100% by state taxpayers. That total doesn’t even include the Medicaid costs for any of the “asylum seekers” enrolled in Medicaid because we don’t have access to those numbers.
There are billions more being spent on education, transportation and housing for migrants as well. At Chicago Public Schools, we estimate that the district is spending up to $410 million annually on “asylum-seeker” children alone.
Those costs are only going to grow considering Gov. Pritzker’s support for migrants and his championing of Illinois’ sanctuary state status. For more details, read: Open borders and sanctuaries are driving Illinois’ migrant chaos, not Trump’s deportations
Yet another reason: Massively ineffective education spending. Illinois keeps spending billions and billions more on K-12 schools, but fewer and fewer students are proficient in reading today. Nobody in the state’s education system is held accountable for that failure.
In fact, Gov. Pritzker wants to reward the system’s ongoing failure by upping the state’s education spend. For more details, read: Nation’s Report Card results are in: Illinoisans spend billions more on education, yet 2024 reading results are still below 2019 levels and The big myth that needs debunking: Illinois needs more money for education.
And another reason: They want to sweeten pension benefits. Illinois lawmakers and government unions are working to sweeten pensions yet again. This time they’re looking to increase the benefits of the state’s Tier 2 workers – employees hired after 2010 with reduced but still handsome pensions.
The cost to taxpayers will be anywhere between a few billion dollars to as much as a whopping $80 billion through 2045 – depending on how far lawmakers go. For the more in-depth piece on the proposed Tier 2 benefits hike – click here. For the short version, see our recent oped in the Chicago Sun-Times.
The next potential tax hike
Don’t be surprised if Gov. Pritzker takes another crack at a progressive income tax scheme. After all, Illinoisans voted 60-40 in favor of a “millionaire” tax in November (though we’d argue the people were hypnotized by the “promise” of property tax relief).
It’s the perfect excuse for Pritzker to get his progressive tax amendment on the ballot again.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Everyone run away as fast as you can. These tax and spend policies will never end.
Every time i see his face i feel sick.
Someone should tell Gov. Fatso that he and the state budget need GLP-1.
That 10 billion, and still growing today, net loss in tax revenue would sure come in handy these days.
Brandon, you should rat out Pritzker, Preckwinkle, and Welch before they cut a deal with the Feds first. Remember, the first one to talk always gets the best deal. You might not even do time if you get some good tapes.
As taxes go up so does the people leaving the state. This is called a death debt spiral. Sooner or later you will have no one to tax.
How soon can DOGE show up in Springfield?
Governor Happy Meal Warrior would f up a lemonade stand. This clown and the rest of his greedy, financial illiterate liberal mental disordered ilk had the chance to put Illinois into a better position with the Covid money if they kept spending flat or even small budget increases. They could have used that opportunity to increase their underfunded pension liabilitie payments.This would not have completely solved the pension issue. That would have required a Constitutional Amendment and they certanly don’t have the character, integrity, intelligence or stones to do that. The utter stupidity in using the Covid money to increase… Read more »
It would be interesting to compare what other states are doing nationally or neighboring in terms of having to either massively roll back spending or enact massive tax increases to make up for all the spent ARPA-COVID $bucks. I’d imagine all the big spend blue state are in the same pickle as Illinois/JB. And if so, plenty of desperation for feds/ Trump admin to leverage and demand reforms and RESCUE US POOR BLUE STATE CHUMBALONE TAXPAYERS!!!!
Most states didn’t take the temporary covid money and spend it on permanent programs, like Illinois did to a large extent. Many states took all that extra windfall and cut taxes. But not Illinois. For more details: https://wirepoints.org/as-illinois-politicians-keep-pushing-progressive-tax-schemes-other-states-keep-dumping-them-louisiana-is-the-latest-wirepoints/
50-state graphic here https://eadn-wc01-3158345.nxedge.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/25-states-including-every-Illinois-neighbor-have-cut-income-taxes-since-2021.-But-not-Illinois.png
JB needs to polish and proclaim his financial track record for his 2028 Presidential Campaign and create the illusion of righting the monetary ship in this state so….kick the can until 2028. National media will cover for him and the citizens of Illinois will suffer the consequences.
Let’s talk spending cuts before tax increases.
whoever disagrees with this is nuts
A welfare roach
Reading the Tea Leaves – Pritzker blames PDJT for IL’s reckless spending and massive budget deficits, and thus tax increases for all to keep the Leftist utopia of IL afloat for the short-term. Pritzker, Democrats, and the public employee union Bosses chuckle when it’s done. The existing trends in IL continue.
And most of the Dem politicians retire out of state after they retire leaving the taxpayer suckers holding the debt bomb.
Pritzker proverbially “hitched his horse to the wrong wagon” and now has no one to provide the money to bail him out of the mess he has made Illinois. Without the bailouts, his future looks pretty bleak for a national office and his last hope is for more tax money from the Illinoisians to cover his mistakes. Now, more than ever, Pritzker’s future tax schemes need to be voted down so he doesn’t have the funds to paper over his mistakes so that he can be placed upon “the has been pile.” Pritzker is the type of politician you have… Read more »
JB’s other problem is that he doesn’t have an original idea in his head. He’s metaphorically linked his brain directly into the DC talking points blob and just repeats the same crap everyone else says. He’s running the exact same campaign most other Democrats (except Fetterman and a couple of others) are running except he’s self-financed to the tune of a billion dollars. He repeats nothing but talking points and acts like he is the #Resistance, except half his comments are a day late and a dollar short because he’s already slow and behind the times. He’d be another Bloomberg… Read more »
The Illinois Territory is on the way. An enterprising fellow could make bank on the revised 49 star flag. Manufacturing hint: it’s 7 rows of 7 stars!
Or just let Canada take Illinois’s place 🙂
This article makes me sick. It may help put pressure on our Governor since he has been the poster boy for mismanagement. The numbers are just staggering. The proposed “millionaires tax” won’t even cover the current pension shortfall in revenue, let alone spending on illegals and the wish list of moving Tier 2 to Tier 1 benefits. If taxpayers think that is only who Pritzker will raise taxes on – hold on for the ride. Any constitutional amendment will likely include wording to make it easier to tax at a lower threshold or adjust the taxing rate without going back… Read more »
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. The Covid billions emboldened Pritzker, who loves to dole out money to further extremist causes and wins him platitudes from leftist media. No way his ego could take the pounding it would take if the rating agencies reversed their rating upgrades on Illinois. He’ll blame Trump even though it has nothing to do with him. How many times will he mention Trump in his budget address?
I’d say that Pritzker spent all the federal money like a drunken sailor, but that would be an insult to the sailors
As a (not-for-much-longer) resident of Illinois since 2014, I have never been able to reconcile how these politicians, challenged by the most basic math, keep getting elected… help me understand? Are there enough people (51%) getting some kind of benefit from all the taxes we pay?
Socialism is great until you run out of other peoples money (Thatcher, I believe).
We moved out of state 4 years ago and have never regretted it. Property tax savings are so substantial that we can afford to take an annual luxury vacation and even have money left over to help fund our children’s college education.
This just makes me so angry but no one in the state cares or wants to hear about budget issues. Democrats are looting the state into fiscal insolvency and the majority of voters are mad they can’t get theirs quick enough.
A tax on services would be really, really bad, detrimental actually. A tax on services could put the state into recession.
You know though my downstate area is plagued with trial lawyers that sue companies across the nation. Those trial lawyers, Democrats all, won’t go for that type of tax the way I see it unless they can come up with a special carve out for their services.
Yeah, it would be tough to add a 10% services sales tax to all services especially $10,000 legal bills to corporations. It would be tough to justify.
Never cuts to the budget, just more for grifters.