Lake County Gazette

Republican state Senate hopeful Chris Kasperski fears Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s latest tax hike threat is a sign of things to come.

“The governor wants more tax revenue one way or another,” Kasperski told the Lake County Gazette. “Considering that wealthier people and businesses are already leaving this state, if they impose an unfair increase on them, I suspect it will spur an even more fervent exodus. The burdens created by that void will inevitably be placed on everyone else who remains.”

With the progressive tax Pritzker has been pushing since his days on the campaign trial far from a done deal when it appears on the Nov. 3 ballot, Lt. Gov. Julianna Stratton recently warned taxpayers anything short of passage could open the door to as much as a 20% tax hike.

More recently, Pritzker has essentially co-signed on the threat, further cautioning it’s either his progressive tax system or up to a 15% cut in government services.

“The power to tax is the power to destroy,” added Kasperski, who is running against longtime incumbent state Sen. Melinda Bush (D-Grayslake) in the 31st District. “The flat tax is the only protection that we have against such arbitrary abuses of the government's power to destroy.”

Kasperski argues it all stands as just another example of how Springfield Democrats have become their own worst enemy in terms of putting the state back on solid financial footing.

“It is this style of governance that has gotten Illinois into the mess that we are in,” he said. “I had hoped that Gov. Pritzker's evasiveness on paying his own taxes would have better informed him of how his income tax scheme will not work. There's nothing appealing about adding more taxes onto an already crushing burden.”

In the end, Kasperski said it fears what impact it all could have on the state’s bottom-line.

“I have grave concerns about the status of our housing market if people are incentivized to leave Illinois because of this,” he said. “I fear that people will abandon this state and everything that they built here just to escape to another part of our country that will treat them better. We need to incentivize and motivate people and businesses to move here and to stay here. That cannot be done by continuing this tradition of destruction via tax increases to pay for yesterday's unfulfilled promises.”