Pritzker Brags About Credit Upgrades While Illinois Families Pay the Price
Pritzker’s Credit-Rating Victory Lap Is a Shell Game Illinois Families Cannot Afford
The governor calls 12 credit upgrades proof of success. But Illinois taxpayers are paying more, private-sector growth is sputtering, pension debt remains crushing and the state is still dead last in credit quality.
By Staff Writer | September 30, 2026
Gov. J.B. Pritzker is celebrating Illinois’ credit-rating upgrades as though he rescued the state from financial ruin and delivered it into prosperity.
He has not.
Illinois did receive credit upgrades. Moody’s raised the state to A1, while S&P Global Ratings raised it to A. Pritzker’s office now boasts of 12 upgrades since 2021. The governor is using those numbers to build the case that Illinois is finally moving forward under his leadership.
But Illinois remains the lowest-rated state in the nation.
That is the fact Pritzker’s victory lap cannot outrun.
A state does not become a success story simply because it climbs from near-junk credit status to the bottom of the investment-grade ladder. A state does not become prosperous because bond-rating agencies decide taxpayers are more likely to keep sending enough money to Springfield to cover the bills.
Illinois did not solve its fiscal crisis. It found more ways to finance it.
And working families are the ones paying the price.
“Illinois has received its 11th credit rating upgrade since 2021.”
— Office of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, August 2026
The statement is accurate. It is also political framing designed to hide the larger reality.
The upgrades do not mean Illinois has the strongest finances in the Midwest. They do not mean Illinois has become affordable. They do not mean pensions are funded. They do not mean families are keeping more of their money. They do not mean employers are choosing Illinois over competing states.
They mean Illinois is considered less risky than it was after years of fiscal dysfunction.
That dysfunction did not begin with Pritzker. But neither did it begin with a single governor or a single budget.
Illinois has been governed primarily by Democrats for decades. Democrats have controlled the General Assembly for most of that time, including the period in which the pension debt deepened, property-tax pressure intensified and the state earned its national reputation for financial mismanagement.
Former Gov. Bruce Rauner was elected in 2014, but his administration faced Democratic supermajorities and a legislature that repeatedly blocked, altered or overrode major elements of his agenda. In 2017, lawmakers overrode Rauner’s veto to enact a permanent individual income-tax increase, raising the rate to 4.95 percent. The same action permanently raised the corporate income-tax rate to 7 percent, before the separate replacement tax paid by businesses is included.
Pritzker inherited a mess. But he inherited it from a political system dominated for decades by the same party now demanding applause for managing the consequences of its own long-running failures.
That context matters because the governor is selling an incomplete story. He tells voters to compare Illinois today with the brink of collapse. Illinois residents should compare the state with where it could be after years of record revenue, repeated tax increases and one-party control of Springfield.
By that measure, Illinois has no reason to brag.
Pritzker’s upgrades were not produced by a dramatic shrinking of state government, a wholesale reduction in spending or a serious transformation of the pension system. They were made possible by collecting more money.
The state has increased revenues, increased taxes and increased fees while continuing to spend at record levels. The fiscal 2026 spending plan totaled $55.1 billion, the largest budget in Illinois history at the time, and depended on more than $700 million in new taxes as well as over $500 million in one-time revenue.
Then came the fiscal 2027 budget, signed by Pritzker at approximately $55.9 billion, again the largest in Illinois history. It included hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes and revenue measures, including a digital-ad tax, changes to business deductions, a tax on digital-asset sales and taxes or fees tied to social-media platforms and fantasy sports.
That is not a government tightening its belt. It is a government reaching deeper into the economy to keep a larger and more expensive system running.
The governor may describe some of those taxes as narrowly targeted. The families who work for affected businesses, buy their products or depend on their jobs know there is no such thing as a tax cost that disappears into thin air. Businesses absorb costs, reduce investment, pass expenses to customers, cut payroll or decide not to expand.
Tax increases have consequences, even when the final bill does not arrive in the mail with the governor’s name on it.
Illinois homeowners understand that reality better than anyone.
Illinois had the highest effective property-tax rate in the nation in 2024, according to the Tax Foundation, at 1.88 percent of owner-occupied home value. Its 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index ranks Illinois 41st for property taxes, 42nd for corporate taxes and 38th overall.taxfoundation+1
For a homeowner, property taxes are not an academic statistic. They are a second mortgage paid year after year.
They decide whether a young family can buy its first home. They determine whether seniors on fixed incomes can remain in the homes they spent decades paying for. They affect rents, because landlords fold tax costs into the price tenants pay each month. They shape whether businesses can afford to own property, expand a facility or remain in a community.
Pritzker does not set every local property-tax levy. But he is the governor of a state where local governments and school districts rely heavily on property taxes partly because Springfield has never honestly dealt with the pension, mandate and spending pressures it passes down the chain.
He cannot celebrate the state’s financial “progress” while ignoring the bills still landing in Illinois mailboxes.
“Illinois has a 1.88 percent effective property tax rate on owner-occupied housing value.”
— Tax Foundation, 2026 Illinois tax-rates and rankings data
That is the out-of-touch quality of the governor’s celebration.
A family does not experience fiscal success because Moody’s moves Illinois up a rating notch. A homeowner experiences fiscal reality when the property-tax bill rises. A worker experiences fiscal reality when the cost of commuting rises. A small-business owner experiences fiscal reality when another tax, compliance burden or fee makes expansion less likely.
And an Illinois resident looking for opportunity experiences fiscal reality when private investment fails to keep pace with the rest of the country.
The divide between government growth and private-sector growth is one of the clearest signs that Illinois is moving in the wrong direction.
From 2018 through 2025, Illinois added only 21,100 private-sector jobs, a growth rate of less than 0.1 percent. Government jobs grew by 4 percent over the same period, according to an Illinois Policy analysis of federal employment data.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that Illinois gained only 1,617 net private-sector jobs in the second quarter of 2025, after 276,218 gross jobs were created or expanded and 274,601 were lost through business closures or contractions.
That is not the profile of a state bursting with private-sector confidence. It is a warning light.
A healthy state does not build its future by expanding government payroll while the private economy barely moves. Government payroll is paid for by taxpayers. Private-sector growth creates the businesses, jobs, investment and income that make tax revenue possible in the first place.
When the private economy is strong, state government can collect revenue without constantly inventing another tax, fee or assessment. When it is weak, government turns to the same taxpayers and job creators again and again because there are fewer growing businesses and workers to generate new revenue organically.
Illinois should be attracting investment. It should be competing aggressively for employers. It should be rewarding entrepreneurs who take risks, create jobs and invest in communities.
Instead, it is developing a reputation for high taxes, complex rules, rising costs and a government that treats private enterprise as a source of revenue before it treats it as a partner in growth.
Illinois’ corporate income-tax rate is 9.5 percent when the personal-property replacement tax is included, according to the Tax Foundation. The organization ranks Illinois 42nd nationally on corporate taxes and says the state’s tax code is weakened by high corporate taxes, high sales and property taxes, as well as estate and franchise taxes.taxfoundation+1
Businesses do not make location decisions based on one tax alone. They consider workforce, transportation, customer access, regulations, energy, property costs, labor costs and quality of life.
But Illinois has made itself harder to defend in that competition.
A governor who presides over repeated new taxes while private-sector growth remains nearly flat does not get to claim success simply because government has enough money to please ratings agencies.
He has created a shell game.
The shell game works like this: Taxpayers send more money to Springfield. State revenue rises. The government pays immediate bills and sets money aside in reserves. Rating agencies recognize that near-term cash position. The governor announces another upgrade.
Then the underlying crisis remains: the pension debt stays enormous, property taxes remain crushing, private growth remains weak, businesses weigh whether Illinois is worth the cost and residents wonder why “progress” has not made their lives more affordable.
Pritzker calls Illinois’ budgets balanced. But Illinois’ pension debt makes that claim feel like a slogan rather than a solution.
The state’s unfunded pension liability was approximately $143.5 billion as of June 2025, and the pension systems were funded at just 47.8 percent.
That liability does not become less dangerous because the state pays the statutory minimum in a given year. It does not vanish because the governor adds a few dollars above the certified payment. And it does not disappear when the state spends money it does not have to expand payroll, add programs or grow the permanent cost of government.
Illinois cannot keep promising more government while its existing promises remain less than half funded.
The pension crisis is not merely a debt problem. It is a growth problem.
Every dollar needed to support a growing government payroll, administer new programs or satisfy politically connected interests is a dollar not used to lower the cost of doing business, reduce taxes, strengthen public safety, improve classroom outcomes or help families stay in Illinois.
Every private-sector job that does not materialize means fewer workers generating the wealth that supports government in the first place.
Pritzker’s model appears to run in reverse: grow government first, collect more from taxpayers, point to improved short-term cash flow and call it reform.
That is not reform. That is maintenance.
And maintenance is not enough for a state whose financial standing still ranks last in the country.
“Illinois just has $147B in unfunded liabilities, but we have a balanced budget!”
— Robb Streitmatter, commenting on a DeKalb Illinois Issues Facebook post
“He is delusional. Show me one tax that decreased, just 1. I dare anyone.”
— Lori Hunter, commenting on a DeKalb Illinois Issues Facebook post
The language is blunt because residents are tired of being told that what they see is not what they are experiencing.
They are told the state is recovering while they see high property-tax bills. They are told Illinois is more stable while they watch new taxes appear in every budget. They are told the economy is moving forward while private-sector job growth barely registers. They are told the pension crisis is under control while the debt remains measured in more than $143 billion.
Pritzker’s administration deserves no credit for merely making the state more capable of paying the bills that decades of Democratic rule piled onto Illinois taxpayers.
The governor does not deserve a victory lap for convincing rating agencies that Illinois can extract more money from its residents. He does not deserve applause for a record-sized budget when the state still trails every other state in credit standing. And he does not deserve to call Illinois a fiscal success while property owners, employers and working families are left carrying the weight of an expanding government and a pension system still buried under staggering debt.
Illinois does not need another press release celebrating a slightly better score from Wall Street.
Illinois needs a governor who understands that taxpayers are not an endless revenue stream, private employers are not an ATM and a budget is not truly balanced when the future has already been handed a $143.5 billion bill.
Until that happens, Pritzker’s credit-upgrade celebration is not proof of success.
It is smoke, mirrors and a bill Illinois families are still being forced to pay.
Related Stories
Official Sources
Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability, state pension liability and funded-ratio data, as cited in reporting on Illinois’ credit position.illinoispolicy
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Business Employment Dynamics in Illinois — Second Quarter 2025.”bls
Office of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, fiscal 2027 budget materials and credit-rating announcements.gov-pritzker-newsroom.prezly+2
Illinois Office of the Comptroller, rainy-day fund data.illinoiscomptroller
Illinois State Board of Education, Illinois Report Card.illinoisreportcard+1
Illinois State Police, Crime in Illinois reporting and statewide crime-data tables.isp.illinois+2
Secondary Sources
Capitol News Illinois, “Pritzker Signs Nearly $56B Budget With New Business Taxes as He Seeks 3rd Term,” June 16, 2026.capitolnewsillinois
Capitol News Illinois, “Pritzker Signs $55.1B State Budget Reliant on $700M of New Taxes,” June 16, 2025.capitolnewsillinois
Tax Foundation, “2026 Illinois Tax Rates & Rankings.”taxfoundation
Tax Foundation, “Property Taxes by State and County, 2026.”taxfoundation
Tax Foundation, “Illinois: 2026 State Tax Competitiveness Index.”taxfoundation
Illinois Policy, “Pritzker’s Record: Illinois 5th-Worst for Private-Sector Job Growth.”illinoispolicy
Illinois Policy, “Even After Upgrades, Illinois’ Credit Rating Is Still Worst in the Nation.”
