Lake County Gazette

State Rep. David McSweeney (R-Barrington Hills) warns voters that banding to reject Gov. J.B. Pritzker progressive tax plan is only half the battle.

“Illinois residents already have the highest tax burden of any state,” McSweeney told the Lake County Gazette. “The progressive income tax hike would eventually devastate Illinois’ middle class.”

Even after the plan the governor has been pushing since his days as a candidate and pumped upwards of $50 million of his own money into to sway voters was soundly rejected, McSweeney said he knows things won’t end there.

Indeed, the governor is already threatening everything from across-the-board tax hike to “painful” budget cuts as a way of counterbalancing things as he sees fit.

“As chairman of the Cut Illinois Taxes Now, I’m fighting to stop Gov. Pritzker’s tax hikes so Illinoisans can keep more of their hard-earned income," McSweeney said. "It’s time to break Springfield’s endless cycle of overspending and subsequent tax hikes.”

McSweeney has long argued that the plan the governor tried selling as just as a tax on the state’s richest residents had little chance of doing what it was being advertised to do.

“The progressive tax is a code phrase for a massive hike,” he said.

Finally, not long before the measure appeared on the Nov. 3 ballot, McSweeney penned an op-ed for Illinois News Network where he sought to warn taxpayers once and for all.

“The progressive income tax, the linchpin of the Pritzker plan, wouldn’t hurt the wealthy a lot – they easily can move out of Illinois,” he said. “It would harm the middle class. There is a reason we do not see a tax rate schedule from those supporting the progressive income tax. They do not want voters to see exactly who the progressive income tax will affect.”