From the Illinois Policy Institute…
On the same day the General Assembly abolished the death penalty for capital crimes in Illinois, lawmakers also implemented the death penalty on Illinois’s economy and taxpayers by passing a 67 percent income tax hike in the face of overwhelming public opposition. The good news is that the citizens of Illinois have the power to overturn this effort during the 2012 elections, now just over a year away.
This tax hike tells the working and middle class voters of Illinois where they stand with the Democratically controlled state government – on the outside looking in. At the front of the line are the public employee unions, their leaders and all who benefit from state government spending at the expense of average citizens (who pay for state government with their private sector jobs).
Today’s study on taxpayer migration shows that the negative Illinois environment is not just driving out job creators and workers, but also the income and tax revenue they represent. Between 1991 and 2009, one Illinois citizen left the state every 10 minutes – that’s 1.2 million residents in all. But these folk didn’t just take their friendships with them; they took $163.6 billion in income and $16.9 billion in state and local tax revenue – gone forever.
We now know what Governor Quinn, Speaker Madigan and President Cullerton think of all of this – they don’t care. If you are a doctrinaire liberal Democrat, you could defend the tax hike on the merits. However, to be sincerely focused on fixing Illinois’s structural overspending, you would still have to take on the public employee pension bomb. The three leaders did not do this; they have let the pension bomb continue to tick while reaching into working and middle class taxpayers’ wallets to the tune of $7 billion.
Make no mistake, the folks in charge in Springfield are fully, transparently aligned with the status quo of economic decline and mass exodus. To learn how big that exodus has been since 1991, see our Leaving Illinois study.
Is it hopeless? No, in fact, they have done us all a favor. While the Institute does not get into elections and electioneering, that does not prevent us from commenting on them. The truth is that this election did not reflect the will of the broad public in Illinois – it reflected the will of the voters who actually showed up on Election Day.
The truth is that the Republican election shortfalls on November 2, 2010 are quite explainable. While there are many factors, the most telling is that Cook County turnout was 51 percent while the 96 downstate counties turned out 47.7 percent. If there had been a turnout plan in place to match that 51 percent turnout in those 96 counties, you would have a Gov. Brady in place rather than Gov. Quinn. And even if this tax monstrosity passed in the lame duck session, a Gov. Brady could have done much to mitigate its impact with his veto power going forward.
So the lesson is that we all must be honest with ourselves and address our policy, our activism and our political weaknesses as a movement. And remember, I am not saying that electing Republicans is the solution, far from it as evidenced by the GOP votes on the pension borrowing in the Senate. But what I am saying is that those who are driven by principle and policy have a pathway to change electoral results in 2012 and beyond. And changing electoral results is a step forward in changing the policy results.
Finally, to be clear on the stakes and the goal, the Illinois Policy Institute stands for a policy of not just repealing the tax hike, but rather eliminating income taxes in total. Nine states have no income taxes. Our mission should be nothing short of becoming the 10th. That is a goal worth fighting for. It would restore economic liberty – and when liberty prevails, prosperity follows, especially for the poor and disadvantaged.
John Tillman
CEO
Illinois Policy Institute
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Moments ago, we issued a press release on talking points on the impacts of the 67% income tax increase, which addresses the following questions:
- The economy is bad and the state’s fiscal situation is worse. Lawmakers wouldn’t have raised taxes unless they needed to, right?
- What does a 67 percent tax hike mean for individual residents?
- The corporate tax was hiked. What does that mean for businesses?
- How serious do you expect out-migration from Illinois will be?
- How did this happen?
The answers are right here.