* From the end of the governor’s press conference this morning…
Reporter: Governor, how long will you continue to blame Mike Madigan for the state’s problems?
Gov. Rauner: ‘Til he’s gone. I mean, I mean, he’s been in charge for 35 years. The guy’s become a millionaire off of high property taxes in this state. It’s not a coincidence that we have the worst property taxes in America. He’s become a millionaire by making them high, and having a tax appeals law firm on the side. And he holds businesses in Chicago hostage to use his law firm. The system is broken.
He controls, he’s rigged his primary. He has rigged his Democratic primary. He has rigged it, ladies and gentlemen. If you guys won’t report it, shame on you. He has rigged the system, he controls it. It’s a Mafia protection racket. And until he’s gone, we aren’t going to fix Illinois and we aren’t going to have a good future.
Reporter: So, who do you think his candidate for governor is?
Rauner: [Laughs] Oh, c’mon. You know what? If you guys are asking that question you’re playing games and you’re not reporting the truth to the people of Illinois. You’d better answer that question yourself. You’ve been around, you know the answer to that question.
Reporter: So, if he’s been in charge for the last 35 years, have you been in charge for the last three?
Rauner: I wish I had. We would have our problems fixed. Illinois would be on a great future. We’d have 200,000 more jobs in this state. We’d have lower property taxes in this state. We would have term limits in this state if I was in charge. I am not in charge. I’m trying to get to be in charge.
[Last question!]
Reporter: How can you say you’re not in charge? You’re the governor of Illinois.
Rauner: The General Assembly can block the major things. What I control, union contracts, we’re incredible, Medicaid reform, incredible, criminal justice reform, incredible. The things that I can control, we’re transforming the state. And I’ve been able to recruit 120,000 net new jobs despite our regulations being bad. If, if I could get the General Assembly to support term limits, property tax relief, red tape reduction on businesses, rolling back that income tax hike, we will kick tails, we will be one of the strongest states in America.
While Rauner has executed new collective bargaining agreements with more than a dozen trade unions, he has been unable to reach agreement with the state’s largest public employee union and was barred earlier this year from attempting to impose his own contract terms on the workers.
Rauner’s overhaul of the state’s Medicaid program has been criticized by Democrats as moving too fast and at too great of an expense to the state. And while Rauner has indeed presided over several significant changes to the criminal justice system over the nearly three years he’s been in office, much of that work was made possible by lawmakers who sent bills to his desk for approval.
I will win the general election. I will win the general election. And if we don’t win the general election, nothing else matters. If we go back to being a one-party state that’s controlled by one person, we don’t have a future. We don’t have a future.
You know what will happen? We will get a massive income tax hike. The candidates controlled by Madigan, all of them have said, ‘The answer to our problems is a massive income tax hike.’ And they say ‘Let’s tax the rich. Let’s tax the rich.’ Well, first of all, you watch business owners flood out of this state when that happens, and our unemployment rate’s gonna go through the roof.
But also, there’s no such thing as a ‘just tax the rich’ plan. No such thing. Doesn’t happen. What happens is the middle class gets socked whenever you do an income tax hike. And if you want proof of that, and I need you guys to focus on the truth on this, look at the states that have done a graduated income tax. Ask New Jersey how it’s gone. New Jersey put in a big graduated income tax to try to tax the rich. You know what? Their middle class, you make $40,000. $40,000 is not a high income. It’s a middle class income. You make $40,000 in New Jersey, you pay six and a half percent. OK?
In New York, graduated income tax. They say ‘Let’s tax the rich.’ In New York, you have a middle class income, you make $40,000, you pay seven and a half percent.
And, you look at the numbers. Look at Massachusetts. Look at Minnesota. Some of the folks have said, ‘Minnesota. They’re Midwest. They’re a farm state.’ You know, look at them. They’ve got a, you make $40,000 a year in Minnesota, you pay seven percent income tax.
And they, and those, New Jersey can’t balance their budget. New York can’t balance their budget. California can’t balance the budget. You make $40,000 in California, you pay eight percent income tax. $40,000.
They will sock the middle class with a tax hike that Madigan and his puppets want and it will destroy Illinois.
We need to be a two-party state. We have to win the general election. And Republicans have to have a voice in the remap. There’s gonna be a remap drawn in 2020, and if it’s not a two-party map, we don’t have a future. Then Madigan will consolidate even more control under one person and we will not have a future, ladies and gentlemen. That’s what’s at stake in this election.
…Adding… Hmm…
Today @BruceRauner claimed: “You make $40,000 in New Jersey, you pay six and a half percent” in income taxes. That’s…not true.
For single filers, the NJ marginal income tax rate at $40,000 is 5.525%.
The Worst Republican Governor in America is now claiming he’s “not in charge” of the state he was elected to lead.
Bruce Rauner, the governor and chief executive of Illinois, made the baffling comments at a press conference earlier today. With a record of no accomplishments and countless crises, the failed governor seems intent on running a campaign of attack, blame, and divide while taking zero responsibility for the damage he’s done.
“The Worst Republican Governor in America is running for re-election on a bold strategy of claiming he hasn’t actually been in charge of the state he’s led for the past three years,” said Pritzker campaign spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh. “Rauner wants credit for imaginary successes, blames everyone else for his failures, and now readily admits he has done nothing to lead Illinois.”
* And Dan Proft tosses in his own two cents…
The buck stops somewhere else. I'll only shake up Springfield if Madigan lets me. Was that Rauner's value prop as a candidate? Feeble. https://t.co/OwSgaQLvMC
…Adding… Two guesses on who’s “in charge” of Rep. Ives’ Twitter account?…
I'll only shake up Springfield if Madigan lets me. Was that the promise? Gov's office is powerful, but a weak man is in it. #twill#ilgovhttps://t.co/LsIGIRWlhR
“Bruce Rauner’s reelection campaign is going in reverse and he’s getting desperate,” said DGA Illinois Communications Director Sam Salustro. “Rauner already faces the impossible task of defending his failed record of higher debt and lower job growth. Now facing a primary challenge, Rauner has accepted help from extreme right-wing ideologues and supported Washington Republicans’ tax plan while desperately deflecting blame for his own failures. Rauner started the week as the nation’s most vulnerable incumbent and it seems like it’s only getting worse for him.”
*** UPDATE 2 *** Kennedy campaign…
Bruce Rauner is kicking off his re-election campaign by dodging the blame for failing to raise the minimum wage in our state, maintaining an unfair property tax system that burdens working families, and overseeing a two-year budget impasse that cut off social services to more than 1 million people in our state. The people of Illinois can’t afford to suffer through another term. We need to radically change the status quo and not only bring opportunity back to our state — but bring accountability back to the governor’s office.
“I choose taxpaying Illinois families. Governor Rauner chose the political ruling class. That’s the difference. That’s the choice in this election… Benedict Rauner betrayed us at every turn.”
“We were promised a conservative reform governor. Instead, we got an Ivy League gender studies professor.” - @JeanneIves in announcing her primary challenge to @GovRauner last eve. She joins us at 7:07am. @MorningAnswer
Rep. Jeanne Ives of Wheaton says in remarks released early Monday by her campaign that she’ll side with “taxpaying Illinois families” instead of the “political ruling class.” She notes that she supported Rauner’s campaign in 2014, but says Illinois needs a new path.
* Ives on Rauner: ‘we got an Ivy League gender studies professor.’ “I supported and helped get Bruce Rauner elected governor in 2014. I believed his argument that his personal wealth would free him to do right by Illinois and lead the revolt against the political ruling class. I was wrong. The tough-talking dude on a Harley with no social agenda turned out to an empty Carhartt jacket. We were promised a conservative reform governor. Instead we got an Ivy League gender studies professor. Benedict Rauner betrayed us at every turn.”
Last year, billionaire Democrat JB Pritzker derided Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for not releasing detailed income tax filings.
“The question is who his investors are, and whether there are any in China or Russia that are affecting his personal income,” Pritzker said of Trump, adding that the future president was “obfuscating in order to avoid being discovered as a liar.”
And then last week, Pritzker released only the first two pages of his income tax returns going back three years. Pritzker told reporters for weeks that he hadn’t released the returns sooner because the task was so “complex.” Um, two pages ain’t “complex.”
Pritzker’s real income appears to come from various private trust funds. He disclosed last week that his trusts paid $25 million in state taxes and $129 million in federal taxes between 2014 and 2016. Pritzker’s personal income taxes were a tiny fraction of that amount. During the same time period, he revealed that he paid only $636,000 in state income taxes and $7.7 million in federal income taxes on his personal income.
He refused to divulge the tax returns for those trusts (which really would be “complex”) because, his campaign claimed, other members of his extended family also benefit from those trusts. OK, fine. But how about divulging the names of his trusts? Tracking down these trusts is a difficult business because they’re shrouded in such secrecy. Names would help.
When a politician refuses to divulge something, particularly after criticizing others for not doing so, you gotta wonder what that person is hiding.
The Pritzker family all but invented off-shore trusts. “No family in the U.S. can copy the Pritzkers in using offshore entities to gain tax advantages,” claimed Forbes magazine back in 2003.
In an attempt to pry Pritzker’s information loose, I reached out to Chris Kennedy’s gubernatorial campaign and asked if they would release the names of the trust funds Kennedy benefits from. They did.
George Skakel was Kennedy’s maternal grandfather. He was from Chicago and founded the fabulously successful Great Lakes Carbon Corporation.
But Kennedy’s a pauper when compared to Pritzker. As mentioned above, Pritzker’s paternal grandfather was a pioneer in using trusts to avoid taxation. Pritzker “took the family fortune from $250,000 in the 1920s to an estimated $2 billion at his death in 1986,” according to Forbes. But when he died in 1986, his heirs told the IRS that AN’s net worth was a mere $25,000. The feds didn’t buy it and the Pritzker family ended up paying the government $9.5 million plus interest nine years later, Forbes reported.
JB Pritzker’s sister Penny, who served as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, is mentioned in the so-called “Paradise Papers,” a massive ongoing research project into the uber-wealthy and mega-corporations conducted by journalists all over the world. Ms. Pritzker transferred shares from two Bermuda companies to a company owned by trusts that benefit her children after she was confirmed for the Cabinet post. Her family’s myriad offshore trusts were a big issue during her confirmation hearing.
Alas, Kennedy’s decision to reveal his trust funds’ names did not move the Pritzker campaign one iota closer to disclosing the names of Pritzker’s trusts.
This ain’t over.
* Press release…
Today, Daniel Biss released a new video, “Trust,” in which J.B. Pritzker holds Donald Trump to a standard that he himself is unwilling to meet.
“The fact that Donald Trump has not released his tax returns…is an abomination. And we shouldn’t have candidates who don’t.”
“You shouldn’t have anybody on the ballot that’s running for governor, who doesn’t release their taxes,” declares Pritzker on camera.
Pritzker has been consistent in criticism of Donald Trump’s failure to release his taxes to the public. “The question is who his investors are,” said Pritzker in an Associated Press interview in July 2016. “He is obfuscating in order to avoid being discovered as a liar.”
“We have the same questions for Pritzker that he had for Trump,” says Biss spokesman Tom Elliott. “He hasn’t disclosed his income from his private trusts, or even their names, so we have no idea how much he’s making and who’s paying him. All we know is that he says he paid $125 million in taxes on his trust income. What could he be hiding?”
*** UPDATE *** Rauner campaign…
Pritzker continues to say one thing to Illinois voters while doing something completely different.
After seven months of delaying release of his tax returns, Pritzker finally released the first two pages containing information on his income.
Though he has often toted his ‘transparency,’ Pritzker refused to release even the names of the private trusts from which he draws the majority of his income.
Meanwhile, Bruce Rauner has fought for working families in Illinois. Governor Rauner is leading the fight against Madigan’s corrupt system with a reform plan that includes term limits, rolling back the Madigan income tax hike, and provide real and lasting property tax relief. Madigan has built a corrupt system over 40 years, and Governor Rauner is fighting to give power back to the people.
While Pritzker continues to deceive the people of Illinois, Governor Rauner works incessantly on their behalf.
After over 200 days of delay, J.B. Pritzker released a portion of his income tax returns, but his disclosed tax records raise more questions than answers.
Pritzker’s tax returns revealed that the vast majority of his income comes from inherited family trusts, not from salary income, business investments, or interest. Between 2014 and 2016, Pritzker paid $8.236 million in taxes on $29.6 million of declared personal income.
Those taxes pale in comparison to the income Pritzker derived from his inherited family trusts. During that same time period, Pritzker paid $128.97 million in federal taxes and $24.95 million in Illinois taxes on those trusts.
Unlike his opponent Chris Kennedy, why has Pritzker refused to answer questions on his family trusts?
Years of investigation and inquiry have revealed that the Pritzker family famously utilized trusts to protect their wealth from taxes and IRS scrutiny.
It’s clear - J.B. Pritzker is obfuscating on income derived from his inherited family trusts because he’s trying to hide the fact that he’s been avoiding taxes for years.
J.B. Pritzker’s campaign for governor is reaching the height of hypocrisy. Pritzker is advocating for yet another income tax hike on middle class families while cutting corrupt deals to slash his property taxes and using trusts to avoid taxes.
As Rich Miller said about J.B. Pritzker’s use of family trusts in his weekly column, “This ain’t over.”
* Related…
* Fact Check: Do Pritzker and Kennedy Have a Tax Transparency Gap?
