Rep. Greg Harris • 13th District
Springfield Update • December 16, 2011
The Ghost Of Christmas Future
A few facts for the week some Illinois corporations got new tax breaks:
- CME Group had record third quarter earnings: net income rising 29% and a one quarter profit of 1/3 of a billion dollars.
- Illinois had a record number of homeless children: 58,000, an increase of 38%. There are 416 youth beds in Illinois to accommodate them
- We will end FY12 with a backlog of $6.3 billion in unpaid bills.
- The U.S. Census says that 1 in 3 families is now low-income or living below the poverty line
- To pay for all these tax breaks, the “job creators” would need to create 78,960 new $50,000 jobs.
The corporate tax break package (on which I voted ‘no’) includes:
- $85 million per year for CME Group
- $15 million per year for Sears Holdings
- $350,000 per year for Champion Labs
- $35 million per year for Research and Development Tax Credits
- $50 million per year for the Net Operating Loss Deduction
- $2 million per year for live theatre productions
- $45 million to increase the Estate Tax Exclusion
- 5 year extension of the sunsets for other 9 tax credits.
The $431 million in individual and corporate tax breaks will mean bleak cuts for our schools, seniors, youth, hospitals and public safety next year. And the ink was not even dry on those cuts when a c
omplete rollback of all corporate tax increases was proposed that will cost another $770 million a year.
It will be exactly 168 years tomorrow that Charles Dickens first published A Christmas Carol. It was written during the height of the industrial revolution that had concentrated wealth into the hands of a fortunate few, displacing the many and forcing them into poverty.
The Ghosts who visited Ebenezer Scrooge reminded him of the obligations of society to provide for those most in need. The lessons of the Ghosts and our obligation to eliminate want, povert
y and provide humanely for the least fortunate are as valid in December of 2011 as they were in December of 1843.
In 2012, let us resolve to remember the lessons of Ebenezer Scrooge.