Conservative activist David Krupa is encouraging Gov. J.B. Pritzker to stand by his word in the wake of his strongly promoted progressive tax plan being soundly rejected by voters.
“Yes, please do cut the budget,” Krupa said. “It’s about time.”
An agitated Pritzker made that threat soon after learning the $58 million he spent from his own pockets in hopes of trying to get his signature piece of legislation over the finish line proved to be in vain.
“There will be cuts, and they will be painful,” Pritzker said. “And the worst thing is, the same billionaires who lied to you about the ‘fair tax’ are more than happy to hurt our public schools, shake the foundations of our cities, and diminish our state. Maybe because they think it won’t hurt them.”
Krupa sees things differently, arguing that the tax the governor has long insisted would only mean higher taxes for the state’s most affluent residents amounted to false advertisement.
“We’ve saved ourselves and our businesses a lot of suffering,” he said. “This tax is not going to do what they say it will, and we all would end up getting taxed more. It’s just a way to pay for all the state’s corruption and take more freedoms away from people. We’re already one of the highest-taxed states in the country and need to be trying to come up with incentives to keep people here and bring more in, not running more away.”
Krupa made it a point of stressing that it is not by coincidence that similar tax systems have never lived up to expectations in other states. Revenues in California have been barely half of what was promised, and Connecticut has lost more than $10 billion and 360,000 jobs since switching to a progressive income-tax rate.
“There’s no way that this would be good for Illinois,” he added.
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