It’s pretty rare to see Illinois state lawmakers wrap up their legislative session before Iowa does. But that’s what happened this year.
Illinois has adjourned until its veto session. Iowa lawmakers are still at work.
The primary purpose is always to pass the budget.
Gov. JB Pritzker signed the roughly $46 billion spending plan into law this week. It’s the biggest in state history.
Revenue projections indicate the state should have a $444 million surplus.
There are concerns Illinois is breaking the law by using pandemic relief money to pay down the state’s debt. Democrats tout the tax relief in the budget.
There will be no sales taxes on groceries for a year.
The current gas tax will hold steady and not increase as it was scheduled to do in June.
Homeowners get a property tax rebate up to 300 dollars.
The budget also permanently expands the earned income tax credit to 20 percent of the federal credit.
Now that the latest Illinois legislative session is in the books, Democrats are likely to use the rest of this election year claiming success.
Republicans…the opposite…pointing to things they see as failures and a waste of money.
We’ll see how much of that we get from two people involved in these debates the last few months: Illinois State Representatives Tony McCombie and Mike Halpin.
""We’re really investing back into those programs that are needed. We’re shoring up our rainy day fun, shoring up our pension fund, and giving money back to the taxpayers," Halpin said.
""Rather than putting money into a surplus or rainy day (fund,) or shoring up existing program that may not be working any longer, we should be prepaying that because that in turn is going to be a tax on small businesses," McCombie said.
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April 24, 2022 at 11:02AM
Illinois Delivered 