State Sen. Daniel Biss said the reason the state government is broke is not because Illinois is a poor state. He said Illinois has a lot of economic activity.
Speaking in Normal ahead of a Wednesday evening event with ISU College Democrats, the Democratic candidate for governor said the problem that lead to the budget standoff is one of unfairness. It was at least Biss' second visit to Bloomington-Normal in the past month.
"We have tax policy in Illinois that has been written for rich people by rich people. We don't have the guts to ask the people who have been the beneficiaries of two generations of economic growth to finally, for a change, pay their fair share, and that's why we have been making these awful choices. I'm running for governor because it's time to fix our tax code," said Biss.
The Evanston Democrat said lawmakers involved in the budget deadlock seem to have missed the point that the two-year standoff did more than cause problems like a snapshot in time. Biss said the consequences may be generational.
"But what I think we sometimes forget is it's not a snapshot in time. Those services get taken away and someone's trajectory is changed. You push that young person out of community college because the state fails in its moral and, in my opinion, legal responsibility to make those grants available and they're probably not coming back," said Biss.
The state still has a massive backlog of bills, an unbalanced budget, and record-breaking unfunded pension obligations.
There are numerous other Democratic candidates for governor including billionaire J.B. Pritzker, Madison County regional Superintendent of Schools Bob Daiber, State Rep. Scott Drury, former CeaseFire Director Tio Hardiman, businessman Chris Kennedy, Dr. Robert Marshall, Chicago Alderman Ameya Pawar, and engineer and business owner Alex Paterakis.
Biss also appeared in a Facebook video with Normal Town Council member Chemberly Cummings:
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