Post-Session Recap, Part 1: The State Budget
Dear Neighbor,
The legislative session adjourned on May 31 — well, technically, it was about 4:30am on June 1. As I do every year, I’m going to send a few emails wrapping up the session, sharing the big picture as well as highlighting some accomplishments I’m particularly proud of.
Today we’ll focus on the state budget. Over the next week or so, I’ll share messages about other big legislative measures we passed; some of my personal highlights from session; and a few issues we couldn’t resolve but we’ll keep working on (yes, including the Bears).
Here are the headlines about the budget. For the next budget year (which starts on July 1), we’re expecting real challenges. We’re going to get a lot less support from the federal government, and the economy is probably going to slow down as tariffs and high fuel prices take their toll.
In the face of that, we did some pretty impressive stuff. Instead of balancing the budget by cutting programs our communities depend on, we protected those programs, strengthened them, and made Big Tech pay to support those investments.
We added $350 million to K-12 schools, reaching the highest funding level in state history. We made increases to higher education and early childhood, opening more subsidized daycare slots and paying providers more too. We increased funding to safety net hospitals and free clinics, recognizing that they’ll bear the brunt of the federal government’s inhumane cuts to Medicaid. We raised wages for the woefully underpaid “direct support professionals” who help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities live in community.
And the thing I’m proudest of is a nation-leading program we call FRESH: Families Receiving Emergency Support for Hunger. The Trump administration kicked hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans off their food assistance. Most of those folks are probably still eligible to get SNAP benefits, they just couldn’t navigate the new requirements or fill out the paperwork correctly. FRESH gives two months of extra food benefits to these families, on their EBT card, while state agencies and social service providers connect with them and help them get re-enrolled if they can.
We can’t undo all the damage Washington is doing to our safety net. But we chose to step into the breach and support families the best we can.
How did we fund these investments in our communities? Not through regressive taxes on working people — in fact, we froze the gas tax, created a sales tax holiday for school supplies in August, and passed hundreds of millions of medical debt relief.
Instead, we made Big Tech pay. We passed a new social media license fee, where Facebook and X will pay for each user in Illinois. We passed a crypto transaction tax so Bitcoin merchants can contribute to the public good. And we enacted a digital ad sales tax on companies that steal your data and spam you with ads.
This is a budget that leads with our values — supporting working people and the most vulnerable while making the ultra-wealthy pay their share.
Of course, there’s much more to do. As you’ve heard me say many times, our state budget needs to be transformed. We need to radically reimagine our tax code to fully fund our schools, healthcare systems and social services.
But we took important steps toward that goal this year, and it’s a budget we should be proud of.
More soon,
Will