Proposed tax increases on businesses all but assures there will be no economic recovery in Illinois
By State Rep. Chris Miller
The economic cost of Gov. Pritzker’s lockdown strategy during the pandemic will be felt for a long time to come.
What is needed is an economic comeback, but that will not happen if the Governor and the Democrats who control the process in Springfield succeed in implementing even more punitive taxes on businesses. In fact, the situation is so dire that merely doing no harm is no longer enough.
Nearly 500,000 Illinois residents are out of work. Illinois has a higher unemployment rate than any surrounding state. And since the lockdowns occurred, Illinois has lost 35 percent of its small businesses. Only the State of Michigan has lost more small businesses regionally than Illinois.
There is no question that the lockdowns are the driving force behind these closures. Consider numbers from the Opportunity Insights’ Economic Tracker, a project of Harvard and Brown universities. According to their numbers, Illinois has more closed businesses than most states. Illinois has the 8th most closed transportation businesses in the nation; the 9th most education and health industry closures; the 9th most professional and business service companies closed and 16th most food and hospitality business closures. Overall, Illinois has the 8th highest small business closures in the nation.
The businesses are closed because government forced them to close, and they were not able to survive Gov. Pritzker’s heavy-handed policies.
Despite these eye-popping business closures, Gov. Pritzker is pushing nine different business tax increases totaling about $1 billion in revenue. The hostility toward employers in Illinois is stunning. Thanks to the Governor’s policies, many businesses were shut down through no fault of their own and even now capacity is limited at many businesses that somehow have managed to survive Governor Pritzker’s draconian lock down.
And the reward for surviving Pritzker’s inept pandemic policies? That’s right higher taxes.
Now is not the time to raise taxes on Illinois employers. The key to Illinois’ comeback is more jobs. It will take time, but we can bring back the 500,000 jobs we lost if we make job creation a priority. Increasing taxes on businesses is only going to result in more job loss.
Small businesses account for nearly 70 percent of job creation in Illinois. Punishing these businesses with higher taxes after shutting them down for the better part of the last year is a formula for disaster and will ensure there will be no economic recovery in Illinois.
It is time we as a state started paying attention to the repercussions of the bad public policies coming out of Springfield. If high taxes and government largesse were the panacea that Pritzker and his cadre of woke leftists want us to believe – why is our state near bankruptcy? Why does the power company send my legislative office threatening letters bills because the state can’t even pay an electric bill for a small office because it is too broke? Why do have more than $140 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and no plan to fix it?
These problems were created by tax and spend liberals who have no regard for the consequences of their dangerous policies. It is time for Illinois residents to rise up and oppose the Governor and his harmful agenda. We must send him a message that he can’t have it both ways. He can’t close businesses and then slap a huge a tax increase on them. It is wrong and it is dangerous. We need a new approach not the failed policies of the past.
It is time to put the interests of the people ahead of the political insiders who fund Democrat political campaigns. Allegiance to political insiders is what created this mess. Putting people, jobs and a commitment to reform is the path forward. Anything less than that is just more “carnival barking” from America’s least competent Governor.
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