Following Gov. Pritzker’s joint State of the State and Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Address, State Representative Tom Weber (R-Lake Villa) released the following statement:
“When the Governor took office a few years ago, the state budget was just over $39 billion. Today, he proposed a $52.7 billion budget, the largest in state history, that spends $2.29 billion more than last year. But, as my Republican colleagues and I have been warning, he doesn’t have federal COVID relief dollars to keep funding pet projects for the never-ending spending appetite that he and his progressive allies possess. So now he wants to increase taxes by a billion dollars on families and job creators to fund his progressive initiatives.
“We’ve already spent $2.8 billion to fund his non-citizen healthcare program and his sanctuary state policy that has flooded our state with migrants, and now he’s proposing we spend another $811 million in this budget year. Whether he wants to admit it or not, we wouldn’t need to raise taxes if he prioritized taking care of Illinois citizens first. And sadly, communities across the state and throughout my district are being forced to take matters into their own hands to pass ordinances that discourage migrant bus drop-offs in our communities because they cannot afford to pay for the burden the Governor and Democrats have created.
“As families and small businesses across our state continue to leave because of the ongoing effects of inflation and crushing property tax burdens, we should be talking about how to provide relief that will keep people here and grow our economy. Instead, the Governor is hellbent on taking the title of most progressive state in the country from California and padding his designs on running for president in the future.”