Chicago City Wire

Northwest Side GOP Club Vice President Ammie Kessem is warning Illinois taxpayers that the progressive tax plan being pushed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker is just another money grab for the City of Chicago.

“You’ll get a nice note from Mayor (Lori) Lightfoot, thanking you for your contribution to heal Chicago’s woes, but it won’t pay any debts or improve the quality of Chicago Public Schools,” she said. “It will fund progressive programs that disincentivize working; it will fund the indoctrination of criminal race theory in CPS and City Colleges; it will fund social justice initiatives in lieu of bail or letting inmates out of Cook County on ineffective GPS monitoring so they can go on looting and shooting sprees; it will fund high-ticket receptions for developers who the city wants to place low-income housing projects in your neighborhoods.”

Kessem has long been a staunch opponent to the tax plan the governor continues to insist with only mean higher rates for the state’s richest residents. She argues the final cost to the state will come in much more than just dollars and cents.

“Illinois’ flat tax is one of the few remaining things that make it still competitive with other states as far as attracting businesses,” she told Chicago City Wire. “It is also one of the few reasons why some retirees still choose to stay in Illinois. You get rid of those incentives and we will see an even greater burden placed upon those that must stay here.”

Kessem argues Pritzker has plenty of reasons for being as gung-ho about the bill as he is, recently pumping more than $51 million of his own money into a ballot initiative committee working to help the tax become law. Vote Yes to Fairness, a committee headed by the governor’s former deputy campaign manager, recently received the funds and is already at work promoting the ballot measure that would convert the current flat tax to a progressive tax system.

“Voters would be absolutely foolish to think that the democrat controlled legislature won’t continue to dig deeper and deeper into their pockets,” she added. “As we have seen in the past few decades, the democrat controlled legislature never has scaled back on budgets.”