WHAT: Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn will deliver his annual Budget Address today. Illinois Policy Institute experts are available to comment on Quinn’s remarks and offer solutions to the fiscal problems faced by Illinois that do not include tax hikes, borrowing or more debt.

WHO: 

In Springfield at the statehouse….

Kristina Rasmussen, Executive Vice President

In Chicago….

Ted Dabrowski, Vice President of Policy

Diana Rickert, Managing Director

Experts also available by phone and Skype.

TALKING POINTS: 

*Jobs, jobs, jobs. This morning, more than 1 million Illinoisans woke up and either did not have a job, or were underemployed. Quinn’s tax-and-spend policies are driving opportunity out of Illinois.

*Quinn promised taxpayers in 2011 that the state tax increase would be temporary. Quinn said the tax increase was needed to pay down an $8.5 billion backlog of bills, but today the bill backlog remains at $7 billion. Meanwhile, by the time the tax increase sunsets in 2015, taxpayers will have sent more than $31 billion in new tax dollars to Springfield. Taxpayers did their part, now Quinn owes it to them to keep his promise to sunset the tax increase in 2015 as planned.

*It will not be catastrophic for Illinois to sunset the tax increase on schedule. Savings needed in fiscal year are just $1.2 billion. The Illinois Policy Institute has developed a menu of reforms that can be adopted to achieve these savings, including improving the way education dollars are spent, reforming retiree health insurance, rightsizing state payroll cuts and other reforms.