SPRINGFIELD – Governor Pat Quinn delivered his first annual budget address to a joint session of the General Assembly today, calling for a sweeping income tax hike along with various other tax and fee increases. State Rep. David Leitch (R-Peoria) expressed concern over how the Governor's budget plan relies heavily on middle-class working families to solve the state's budget woes before recommendations can be made to comprehensively cut spending after more than six years of overspending by former Governor Rod Blagojevich and legislative Democrats.
"It was very disappointing," said Leitch, "Instead of cuts, the 2010 budget would increase spending by $3.5 billion. The budget proposal would short the pension systems by $550 million and employ the same gimmicks Blagojevich did with charge-backs and sweeps of appropriated funds, capped off by the largest income tax increase in Illinois history. These are the same gimmicks that got us into this mess, so it was discouraging to hear them proposed again. Any new revenues should be set aside to reduce our massive debt and appropriations should be frozen as Gov. Jim Edgar did during extreme budget problems in the early 1990s. Imposing new taxes and fees is the most irresponsible thing the state could do now with so many businesses, large and small, struggling to survive this brutal recession."
Among the key components of the Governor's budget plan would be raising the $78 license-plate sticker fee to $98, increasing the cigarette tax by an additional $1-per-pack over 2 years, raising the income tax by 50% (from 3 to 4.5%), boosting the corporate tax rate from 4.8% to 7.2%. Other Democrat leaders in the General Assembly are also proposing an increase in the state sales tax on motor fuel.
The state will close business on June 30th with at least $4.2 billion in deficit and will face a shortfall of $11.5 billion by the summer of 2010.
"Governor Quinn offered bold pension reform ideas, but they mostly could not be addressed in a timely way without opening existing union contracts," Leitch added. "Illinois already has the worst-funded pension system in the nation, and we must address our spending discipline problems if we want to navigate out of this quagmire."