* Center Square…

Gov. J.B. Pritzker could soon sign a massive tax credit bill on his desk that gives breaks to specific industries, like electric vehicle manufacturers, quantum computing companies and semiconductor manufacturers.

Illinois Republicans called House Bill 5005 a bailout for big corporations.

Um, not mentioned in the story is that HB5005 received 90 votes. By my count, 18 Republicans voted for the bill, including this legislator who is quoted in the story bashing the bill…

State Rep. Dan Ugaste, R-Geneva, called the bill counter productive.

“We need to entice businesses to come to Illinois so our people have jobs. We are still doing nothing to fix the business climate in Illinois, that is the underlying problem,” Ugaste said. “There’s over taxation, over regulation and high cost from litigation. So here we are voting on a bill to try and entice businesses by offering them tax incentives and telling them, ‘your taxes will be lower,’ and yet later we will vote to raise taxes on businesses by over $700 million, almost a billion. Let’s not waste our time.”

* To the sponsor…

The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Dave Vella, D-Loves Park, argued corporations will not get tax breaks unless they actually provide jobs.

“So this is not a bailout … in fact, the money that’s going to come in to the state of Illinois, $20 billion, over the next 30 years is going to end up creating more small businesses and more jobs for the state than I think any of us can even imagine,” said Vella.

The bill also renews a number of tax incentives the state has already offered like the Reimagining Energy and Vehicles tax credit. Gotion, an electric vehicle battery manufacturer, took advantage of this credit. Gotion continues getting their tax break of over $530 million in exchange for providing 150 jobs by 2028.

Hilarious. The squareheads left out something from the agreement…

Gotion will establish its lithium-ion battery cell, module, pack and energy storage system integration manufacturing campus in Manteno, Illinois. Gotion will create 150 Full-Time Employees by the Benchmark Date and 1,651 Full-time Employees by December 31, 2029. The Company or its Affiliate, as applicable, anticipates creating an additional 961 new jobs for a total of 2,612 jobs created for the Project during the term of the Agreement.