* ABC 7…

llinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch is pushing for a new tax on millionaires as the General Assembly gets ready to return to work in Springfield next week.

It comes as lawmakers face a $2.2 billion budget deficit. […]

“Nothing new, we’ve done it before,” the Democratic speaker said.

Welch, in a recent interview, was seemingly unfazed by the $2 billion deficit.

“Tomorrow is my five-year anniversary as speaker of the House. And I think every year, in January, going into the start of session, we’ve been faced with a deficit,” Welch said.

* That $2 billion number comes from a recent Tribune article…

In an election-year General Assembly session where what won’t pass will likely be as telling as what might, Illinois lawmakers return to the Capitol facing a familiar but narrowing path: avoid politically radioactive fights, plug a more than $2 billion budget hole and sell voters on a single unifying theme Democrats are leaning on from Washington to Springfield — affordability.

There is no doubt that the state has some fiscal problems ahead, particularly due to federal action. But that $2.2 billion number is from the state’s October five-year forecast. And there’s a big caveat in that forecast…

The projections assume growth in revenues under existing law in fiscal year 2026 and the remainder of the forecast period utilizing the August 2025 S&P Global baseline forecast.

August is a long time ago. And the data in the August report is even older than that. Lots has changed since then.

* Back to the Tribune story…

Even with modest revenue growth late last year — Illinois collected more than $230 million more in December than the same month the year before […]

A recent report from the bipartisan Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability showed Illinois received $281 million from Washington in December — $83 million less than the same month a year earlier, excluding now-exhausted pandemic aid.

OK, but that totally ignores the overall tone of COGFA’s most recent report. As I told subscribers last week, the commission said this, with the caveat that things can always change…

Through the first six months of FY 2026, total General Funds revenues are now up $1.190 billion, or 4.8%. […]

The year-to-date growth of 4.8% through December exceeds the 2.4% rate of growth that is needed to meet the revenue assumptions underlying the enacted FY 2026 budget.

So, yeah, things are definitely very rough. The Trump administration is trying to whack this state but good. Even so, revenues are being collected at twice the rate than was expected. And the projection cited by the Trib is based partly on outdated numbers and also doesn’t include changes that the governor wants to make to the tax code to further counter July’s huge federal corporate tax cuts.

The truth is nobody knows what the heck is gonna happen. But what we do know is that the projections included in the Tribune story are essentially moot.