The years 2010 through 2019 will go down in Illinois history as a decade of public policy failure and economic decline. High fixed costs for pensions and government worker health care have prevented the state from balancing its budget in any year since 2001. Since the Great Recession in 2008, the state’s fiscal imbalance has...
Despite Gov. J.B. Pritzker touting growth in “every major region,” Illinois shed jobs in three metropolitan areas and lagged the national average in seven more.
Springfield lawmakers have yet to learn the lesson that money walks. And it’s not just to other states. Sometimes, it walks past the legal dispensary with a 40% tax rate and into a dealer’s house.
Red-light cameras are taking more and more money from Illinois motorists. But dubious safety benefits, a cloud of corruption and a bipartisan bill in Springfield may combine to take them off the streets.
Without reforms that level the playing field between the public and private sectors, the cost of Illinois’ public sector workers will continue to damage the state’s labor market, economy and taxpayers.
While J.B. Pritzker has not released a detailed tax plan of his own, reasonable cost estimates suggest the tax hike required to pay for the candidate’s spending promises would require doubling Illinois’ state income tax rate and cost the state an estimated 132,000 jobs and $31.3 billion in forgone GDP.
Chicago’s $1.15 billion projected budget gap is the latest in a decades-long string of structural deficits. Making Chicago’s high taxes worse is not the solution.