Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker seems to live in an alternate reality, where he has brought the state back from the brink of death after a supposed reign of irresponsible Republican governance.
Pritzker, who is undoubtedly planning to run for president in 2028, boasted on Twitter/X about the state of Illinois’s finances. “After years of GOP dysfunction, I took office and rebuilt Illinois,” Pritzker posted. “8 balanced budgets. 12 credit upgrades. Bills backlog cleared. $2B+ Rainy Day Fund.”
ILLINOIS OFFICIALS RELEASED MORE THAN 500 CRIMINAL IMMIGRANTS DESPITE ICE DETAINERS, HOUSE GOP REPORT FINDS
What “years of GOP dysfunction” is Pritzker referring to? The four-year period from 2015 to 2019, when Illinois was governed by a Republican, Bruce Rauner. Rauner slipped into office during the 2014 GOP wave election and was then swept out by Pritzker during the 2018 Democratic wave. Rauner was the first GOP governor of Illinois in 12 years, and his tenure lasted only one term.
More notably, during those four years of “GOP dysfunction,” the state was still heavily controlled by Democrats, who held majorities in both chambers of the Illinois state legislature. Illinois Democrats have controlled the state House since 1997 and the state Senate since 2003. Rauner’s four-year term was an interruption of Democratic dominance in the state, and he still had to deal with Democratic majorities in the legislature for those four years.
But has Pritzker indeed fixed Illinois’s finances? Not at all. In 2024, Pritzker signed the largest budget in the history of the state, which included spending $970 million on illegal immigrants. Pritzker boasted that he continuously balanced the budget, but he only did so by jacking up taxes year after year to accommodate his bloated spending policies. In his first term, Pritzker chased 275,000 residents out of Illinois over tax concerns, taking with them some $35 billion in personal income and costing the state $1.4 billion in revenue.
CHICAGO CITY COUNCIL DEMANDS BRANDON JOHNSON MAKE ‘REAL SAVINGS,’ NOT TAX TRICKS IN CITY BUDGET
Not only that, but Pritzker’s “balanced budgets” are nothing more than a financial mirage. According to the watchdog group Truth in Accounting, Illinois uses “political math” to balance its budgets while piling up debt. The state has “the worst ranking in the nation for unfunded pension liabilities.” WalletHub ranked Illinois dead last in economic health, and Truth in Accounting put the state dead last in financial transparency.
Pritzker wants to paint himself as a competent executive who knows how to clean up a mess left by Republicans, giving himself a lane in the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries. Instead, he is yet another Democrat in power in a Democratic-dominated state who has set Illinois up for future financial failures once he leaves office. He’s Gavin Newsom without the average charisma, which is why he is nothing more than a second-tier presidential candidate.
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
