SE Illinois News

Newly elected Republican state Rep. Paul Jacobs wonders if voters fully realize the magnitude of the bullet they dodged with their rejection of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s progressive tax proposal.

“The progressive tax was rejected and was absolutely necessary to be rejected,” Jacobs told the SE Illinois News. “I think that for us to have signed onto the progressive tax and allowed the state legislators to haphazardly raise the taxes on any group that they want with any amount of tax would have increased to our outmigration and even more closings of our businesses.”

Despite the governor long arguing that the tax would only mean higher rates for the state’s most affluent residents and pumping in the neighborhood of $50 million of his own money into a campaign to get it over the finish line, voters soundly rejected the measure that required 60% approval from all voters for passage.

Recently elected as in the 115th District, Jacobs hopes that comes to spell the start of a new day in Springfield.

“With that defeat, we will quit driving people out of the state,” he said. “We can’t afford to have more outmigration by the excessive taxes that are going to be placed on businesses and individuals. It would never remain just on people making $250,000 a year and the people of Illinois are very astute to what was happening and what could happen with that progressive tax.”

Jacobs said all the governor’s ongoing threats, ranging from across-the-board tax hikes to “painful” tax cuts, strike him as just more rhetoric.    

"The governor’s threats are just as non-productive as before,” he said. “We can’t continue to run people and businesses out of the state and expect a good healthy economy. I don’t think that he is getting serious about making cuts when he added $2 billion over what they did two years ago on the budget which is still not balanced.”