Lake County Gazette

Sen. Craig Wilcox (R-McHenry) worries Gov. J.B. Pritzker's $41.6 billion state budget proposal targets hard-hit small businesses.

"The governor's budget protects certain classes and will shift [a] massive burden on smaller classes," Wilcox told the Lake County Gazette. "The only way for private companies to balance what he's proposing is to eliminate jobs and merge, which over time has that same effect."

While the governor's plan doesn't add new taxes, Wilcox said it put an undue burden on the small business community by recommending cuts of nearly $1 billion in business tax breaks as a way of balancing state spending.

The governor's 2022 general fund budget includes nearly $2 billion less in spending than fiscal year 2021, with the dip from cuts to appropriations, a hiring freeze, flat operational spending, full required pension payments, and the closure of corporate tax loopholes.

The Illinois Policy Institute reported a $3.9 billion budget deficit this year, a $4.8 billion gap for the next fiscal year and a $4.7 billion hole for the fiscal year 2023. Pritzker blamed many of the state's revenue shortcomings on Republicans who objected to his failed progressive tax plan.

Wilcox said it all as just more of the same policy that has fueled many of the state's problems.

"I want to know when legislators, state employees and labor unions are going to start participating in the economic downturn tied to the health pandemic," he said. "Families and businesses have tightened budgets to adjust to their new financial realities, yet the governor continues to protect certain groups of Illinoisans. Government-imposed shutdowns have decimated the small business community, and rather than imposing new taxes on them, the governor should be providing a pathway for them to rebuild and recover."