by Mark Cavers Bloomberg Business Week reports that legislators in Missouri are moving to reject some federal money to fund work that would speed up rail travel between St. Louis and Kansas City. The mounting concerns over future costs to Missourians echo similar concerns in a host of other states that have rejected federal money. Over...
by Mark Cavers In January, the General Assembly passed a tax hike that is projected to take around seven billion dollars from the taxpayers of Illinois. Tax hikes like this one get a lot of attention from the media for the harm they cause businesses and taxpayers. But there are other government policies that can be just as harmful...
by Mark Cavers In the case of a government “shutdown” the government doesn’t actually shut down. Rather, essential services remain up and running: Military personnel in Iraq don’t suddenly fly home, TSA agents don’t stay in bed, and the IRS doesn’t stop collecting taxes (although, in a particularly cruel bit of irony, they stop sending...
by Mark Cavers Last week Bloomberg News reported that bond markets are reacting poorly to Governor Quinn’s tax and spend approach. Rather than putting the state back on firm ground, we are in a more precarious position then we were four months ago. From the Bloomberg article: “The market seems unimpressed with Quinn’s plans. The extra yield investors...
by Amanda Griffin-Johnson Today, the Tax Foundation released their annual report on the Tax Freedom Day for each of the fifty states. The Tax Freedom Day measures the number of days Americans have to work to pay for all their annual taxes at the federal, state and local level. The national Tax Freedom Day for 2011 is...
by Brian Costin With election day rapidly approaching, and early voting already underway, citizens in a number of Cook County communities are in the process deciding on 10 property tax hike referendums. A 2006 reform to state laws intended to give voters an accurate estimate of how a property tax hike referendum would affect them....
by Amanda Griffin-Johnson Mercatus senior research fellow Veronique de Rugy’s latest publication describes the dire consequences of the federal government’s spending trajectory. She shows the long-term divergence between federal government spending and tax revenue in the chart below. As Veronique de Rugy explains: If we do not change course, servicing this debt will end up as our biggest...
Following the Senate Republicans’ press conference Thursday, Illinois Statehouse News released an interview with the governor’s budget spokesperson, Kelly Kraft. In her interview, Kelly paints a doomsday picture of what Illinois would be like after cutting $6 billion from the budget. Kelly states the governor has already made dramatic budget cuts, but we know that’s not true....
by Collin Hitt The Illinois Policy Institute released Budget Solutions 2012 on Tuesday, March 8. To date, it is the only detailed, balanced, sustainable budget plan that has been published on state government general fund spending. The plan contains several recommendations for education and Medicaid spending, but it also includes one idea that was completely new and...
In February, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn proposed an unbalanced budget that relied on hefty tax increases and $8.75 billion in borrowing – not to mention, increased overall state spending by $1.7 billion. If followed, Gov. Quinn’s budget will prompt Illinois to run recurring, annual deficits of nearly $3 billion by the year 2016. By the...
by Mark Cavers For months, the Institute and others have been warning that passing the Amazon Tax bill would force even more jobs out of our state. Government policies do not take place in a bubble, they have real life impacts. Yesterday Governor Quinn signed the Amazon Tax into law. This effectively cuts off the revenue streams for numerous Illinois based companies that...
While Washington debates spending cuts some deny there is even a problem.
Illinois Policy Institute CEO John Tillman presents Budget Solutions 2012.
Since 2009 the Illinois General Assembly has tried over and over again to pass a tobacco tax which will unfairly target small business owners and the poor.