Waste watch: Illinois spends $1M to rethink capitalism
Illinois progressives want to reimagine capitalism and hand out free money with the tax dollars you worked for.
Illinois state lawmakers are putting over $1 million behind projects to “rethink capitalism” and so they could pay people for not working – all using money other people worked for.
There are plenty of examples of paying people money for nothing having failed and hurting their families. But the state’s 2026 budget includes a $200,000 grant for the Reimagining Capitalism in Illinois Lab for “operational expenses” and an $827,000 grant for a guaranteed income pilot program.
Illinois faces low economic growth, high debt and ballooning pensions – all because state lawmakers are taking ever-more from taxpayers and driving out jobs and working families. Lawmakers claimed the 2026 budget contained no pork, but a closer look shows 2,815 items over $200,000 lawmakers decided to fund in the final hours of the legislative session – rushed, harmful to taxpayers and with no time for public scrutiny.
Those include $40 million for a sports complex at the alma mater of Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch.
They also include the Reimagining Capitalism in Illinois Lab, which aims to “change the narrative about who has an ownership claim to American prosperity” and supports wealth redistribution policies. The lab is housed under the Chicago Federation of Labor.
Its primary policy proposal, which its director, Brian Johnson, has written on, is the “citizen dividend,” a 5% tax on all business profits redistributed to every American citizen. If implemented at the state level in Illinois, the program would yield just $216 per resident – doing hardly anything to fix inequality and likely pushing more businesses to fleethe state.
The budget also handed an $827,000 grant for a guaranteed income pilot program, with no details or justification. However, a recent pilot program in Illinois resulted in recipients’ individual income, excluding program payments, falling by $1,800 per year and labor force participation declining by 3.9 percentage points, according to research from the National Bureau of Economic Research from 2024.
Using taxpayer dollars for failed or ideologically driven experiments is a poor substitute for policies that promote economic growth, opportunity and fiscal responsibility.
Competitive grants with objective evaluation criteria and reporting requirements should be scored and tracked by a state agency. This ensures the funds are allocated and used properly, not handed to a lawmaker’s high school sports team.
Earmarks such as the Reimagining Capitalism in Illinois Lab are problematic because the process for proposing and securing them lacks transparency. Taxpayers do not know why these appropriations are made in the first place, and do not know exactly how the funds will be spent.
Illinois doesn’t need to “reimagine capitalism,” it needs to reimagine it’s broken budgeting process. This includes setting a spending cap, banning “gut-and-replace” tactics, allowing three days to review the budget’s final form prior to enactment and requiring lawmakers to disclose and justify all earmarked spending requests.
Want to see the 2,815 earmarks and questionable spending state lawmakers put in this year’s budget? Use our look-up tool below.