-By Warner Todd Huston
As the state of Illinois edges near becoming the first U.S. state to ever be rated junk bond status, the Democrat-controlled legislature of the bankrupt state of Illinois has just voted to slam its citizens with a hefty 32 percent hike in state income taxes.
After a series of delays as a legislature obviously embarrassed by its own actions dithered, the State House finally approved of the Senate’s override of the governor’s veto with a 71-42 vote burdening the state with a massive tax hike. It was a vote that saw ten of the state’s Republican contingent abandon Republican values and join the Democrats in approval.
Thursday’s vote permanently increases the state’s personal income tax rate from 3.75 percent to 4.95 percent. It also raises the burden on businesses raising the rate from 5.9 percent to seven. It all amounts to a 32 percent hike for the average Illinoisan and a $5 billion tax hike overall.
The new tax hike all the more galling because Illinois already has the highest property taxes in the nation, a fact that often forces retirees out of their homes and fleeing to other states. This is also a situation not lost on the state’s African American population, either. Illinois is witnessing a growing number of its African American citizens moving out of the state with Chicago and Cook County residents leaving at the fastest rate.
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Bankrupt Illinois Slams Citizens With 32% Income Tax Hike, More to Come”
The Republicans bumped up their gains in the Senate and the House of Representatives and also gained in Governor’s mansions across the nation and even deep, deep blue Illinois was affected by this GOP wave. But even with these few bright spots, Illinois is the worst state in the union on every level.
Last weekend Illinois GOP candidate for Governor Bruce Rauner took the ALS “ice bucket challenge.” When he did he urged Illinois Democrat leaders to join him in the challenge. In reply, the state’s Democrat House leader outrageously found a way to link the charitable challenge to a claim that Republicans are like the ISIS terrorists in Iraq!
Why is it not a surprise that the first moves to make Chicago the home of the Barack Hussein Obama Presidential Library are born in corruption? But I suppose it is a fitting way to start a library for one of the biggest failure and most corrupt politicians ever to sit in the White House.
President Obama’s home state of Illinois has gained a new distinction: it tops the nation in the growth of the number of its citizens on food stamps.
You know things are bad when governments start selling things they “own.” The latest is the state of Illinois so over spent and in a budgetary hole that authorities are floating the idea of selling advertising space on its auto license plates.
It has been revealed that
Recently the Associated Press asked the Illinois State Police for its list of Illinois gun owners. The police refused saying that the release of the names and addresses of all those registered firearm owners in Illinois would be a violation of their privacy but Illinois Attorney General Democrat Lisa Madigan disagrees with the police and has ruled that the list should be released to the press.
Democrat Speaker of the House Michael Madigan adjourned the lame duck session in Springfield today without coming to a final floor vote on Governor Pat Quinn’s 75% raise in the State’s income tax. Obviously he didn’t have the votes to pass it.
