ILLINOIS: GOVERNED INTO DECLINE

January 02, 2026•5 min read

The State That Spends While Standing Still

As Illinois’ economy stalls, government grows larger, costlier—and more insulated from consequence.

By Staff Writer
December 31, 2025

Illinois is not collapsing.

It is quietly wearing down.

There is no single moment of crisis, no headline catastrophe. Instead, there is a slow grind—years of decisions compounding, pressure building without release. Decline here doesn’t announce itself. It blends into routine. And that is what makes it dangerous.

The signs are everywhere if you stop to look. Roads patched again and again, never quite repaired. Schools that remain open and operational, yet send too many students forward unprepared and falling behind. Paychecks that still arrive on schedule, but buy less, stretch less, and promise less than they once did.

Nothing is failing loudly enough to force action. Everything is failing quietly enough to be tolerated.

This is the space Illinois now occupies: not crisis, but erosion. Not collapse, but drift. A state where government grows larger, faster, and more expensive while the private economy struggles to keep pace.

The imbalance widens every year.

And while it may not feel like an emergency yet, the math guarantees that it will become one.

Since Gov. J.B. Pritzker took office, Illinois has dramatically expanded state spending while producing some of the weakest economic growth in the nation. It is a contradiction masked by press releases, surplus announcements, and carefully framed talking points. Beneath the surface lies a fundamental failure of governance: a state budgeting as if prosperity were surging, while its economy barely moves.

“Illinois has grown government nearly five times faster than it has grown its economy.”

An economy stuck in low gear

From 2018 to today, Illinois’ real gross domestic product has grown just 7.4%, placing it among the slowest-growing states in America. Over the same period, the national economy expanded 18%—more than double Illinois’ pace.

This is not a statistical footnote. Economic growth determines opportunity: job creation, wage gains, business formation, and resilience during downturns. When growth stalls, everything else becomes harder.

Yet while Illinois’ economic engine sputtered, state government pressed harder on the accelerator.

A budget untethered from reality

Illinois’ state budget has grown by more than 36% since 2018. Today it stands at $55.2 billion. Had spending simply tracked economic growth, the budget would be closer to $46 billion—a difference of more than $9 billion every year.

That gap did not appear by accident. It was constructed through policy choices that favored immediate revenue over long-term stability.

At least 49 tax hikes have been enacted since 2019. Among them:

Doubling the state gas tax and permanently tying future increases to inflation, flooding the road fund with billions—only for those dollars to be routinely diverted into politically expedient, short-term patchwork projects that preserve appearances rather than fix infrastructure.
Halting the scheduled repeal of the franchise tax, despite prior bipartisan agreement.
Capping retailers’ sales tax discounts, effectively raising taxes on brick-and-mortar businesses already fighting to survive.

Each move was sold as necessary. Together, they reveal a clear pattern: Illinois balances its books not by fixing structural failures, but by extracting more from a shrinking base and calling it progress.

“Tax hikes have become a substitute for reform.”

The hidden costs of governing this way

Taxes do not exist in theory. They shape decisions—where businesses locate, where retirees settle, and whether young families decide to stay or leave.

Illinois already carries one of the heaviest overall tax burdens in the nation. The result has been years of population loss and business flight—slow, steady, and devastating in its cumulative effect.

Meanwhile, the real drivers of Illinois’ fiscal instability remain largely untouched:

Ballooning pension obligations pushed forward to future taxpayers
Expansive union contracts agreed to without sustainable funding plans
Flawed school funding formulas that increase costs without delivering results

Tax hikes have provided political cover—insulating leadership from accountability. As long as revenue keeps flowing, reform can be postponed.

The next gamble

Now comes the next proposal: dismantling Illinois’ constitutional flat income tax in favor of a progressive income tax, despite voters rejecting the idea in 2020 and polls continuing to show opposition.

Supporters frame it as fairness. In practice, it would give lawmakers unprecedented power to decide who pays—and how much. History suggests such power rarely remains limited. Small businesses, retirees, and middle-income families are never far behind.

All of this unfolds as the state budget is projected to grow another 16% by 2030, even as national economic growth slows and Illinois continues to lag.

“Illinois is planning tomorrow’s spending on yesterday’s assumptions.”

Why Illinois residents should care

Because this is not abstract.

It shows up in higher costs, fewer opportunities, weaker schools, fragile infrastructure, and a shrinking margin for error when the next recession arrives. A state cannot tax its way to prosperity. It cannot spend faster than it grows forever. And it cannot indefinitely ignore the consequences of policies that drive people, capital, and ambition elsewhere.

Illinois doesn’t need another speech about responsibility. It needs restraint. A budget cap tied to economic growth. Structural reform that confronts pension debt, labor costs, and broken formulas—rather than masking them with ever-higher taxes.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker is now seeking a third term.

The record is no longer debatable:
Slow growth. Exploding spending. Rising taxes. Deferred consequences.

Illinois is not broken—but it is being hollowed out, year by year, decision by decision.

And now voters must decide what that record deserves.

Will drift be rewarded?
Will decline be excused?
Or will Illinois finally say: enough?