Following the passage of the fiscal year 2024 budget in the Illinois House of Representatives, State Representative Tom Weber (R-Lake Villa) issued the following response:
“As I predicted after the Governor issued his budget address back in February, this state budget is locking taxpayers into long-term spending commitments for Democrat pet projects and doing virtually nothing to ease the tax burden our families are facing. Illinois families are still grappling with high inflation. Groceries, utilities, gas and other living expenses have all gone up. Even so, Democrats are pressing ahead to spend your money on pay raises for themselves and a fully paid-for healthcare program for undocumented immigrants that projections forecast to cost more than $1 billion. Not even legal citizens with health insurance have no-cost coverage this good.
“On top of all this, they are also letting the Invest in Kids Tax Credit Scholarship program expire so thousands of students from low-income and working-class families will no longer have the ability to attend higher-performing schools.
“This budget sets Illinoisans up for a major tax increase by adding major programmatic spending and hiding those costs in future fiscal years. It’s apparently a radical concept in Illinois, but the state has to start living within its means and restore some fiscal sanity to our state budget process. I voted NO because I refuse to be a willing accomplice in setting up residents for tax hikes to fund an aggressively partisan agenda.”