Budget & Taxes

We didn’t opine on the nearly $5,000 raise lawmakers gave themselves at the time they passed their record-sized $55.2 billion budget, but we can’t leave it unaddressed. Democrats in both chambers voted unanimously for the budget and by extension, their own raises, while every Republican opposed both measures. Our politicians don’t deserve any raises at all.

At some point, everyday Illinoisans will figure out that their government, in promising to do too much, is doing more harm than good. That their lawmakers, no matter how well-intentioned they say they are, are actually dragging Illinois down.

Gov. Pritzker claims Democrats cut taxes for everyday people. What tax cuts? Illinoisans are paying the nation’s highest property taxes, the 2nd-highest gas taxes and the highest cell phone taxes. Where are the tax cuts for everyday Illinoisans, Gov. Pritzker?

Illinoisans are paying West Coast gas prices for the pleasure of living in the Midwest. The latest data from AAA shows Illinoisans pay an average of $3.41 per gallon of gas, the nation’s 7th-highest price and the highest east of the Rockies. The six states with higher gas prices are all on the West Coast.

A little more than three months ago the governor’s budget office projected a whopping $3.2 billion deficit for 2026. So it’s reasonable to ask how that deficit simply disappeared when Pritzker released his proposed 2026 budget last week. It’s a particularly interesting question given that Pritzker declared in his budget speech: “I am not going to base a budget on bloated revenue estimates.”

There were two big takeaways from Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s 2026 state of the state and budget address. First was Pritzker’s use of the speech to frame Trump and, by extension, his 70 million-plus supporters, as Nazis. The second big takeaway is how wide the gap has gotten between what the governor says he’s done for Illinois versus reality on the ground.

It’s not just ordinary Illinoisans that are taxed too much. The state’s big companies are also stuck paying the 3rd-highest corporate income tax rate in the nation, behind only New Jersey and Minnesota.

We’re not arguing for Trump to come and directly target Illinois for disruption, though we’ll benefit from much of what the president does at the federal level. The real disruption Illinois needs is local – and Illinois-specific. We don’t need Trump for that. We don’t need the feds. We don’t need outsiders. We need to do it ourselves. Ordinary Illinoisans disrupting what’s wrong with our state.

This week Palatine became the latest Illinois city to pass a 1% local grocery tax in anticipation of the statewide tax expiring in 2026. That’s reminded us of something that shouldn’t be left unsaid: Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s elimination of the statewide grocery tax was little more than an attention-getting stunt. He says he’s canceled the tax, but all he did was shuffle the impact to somewhere else.

The governor’s budget office recently projected $23 billion in deficits over the next five years. Why? Pritzker wants to continue the pandemic-era spending he’s put together since coming into office in 2019. If the governor has his way, the state’s budget will have grown by a whopping $23 billion by 2030 – a near 60% increase in little more than a decade.