Michele Hunter on the Issues
Jobs and the Economy
We must have a pro-growth agenda in Illinois that reduces our taxes and encourages businesses to set up shop here instead of fleeing to other states where they have policies that support economic growth and job creation.
Public Safety
We need to repeal HB3653, the so-called Safe-T Act. In fact, this bill has made us less safe, and it is designed to be easy on criminals. We cannot tie the hands of law enforcement and pretend that somehow, we will be safer. HB3653 needs to be repealed. Since the implementation of this bill the 54thDistrict has seen an uptick in crime and the release of many criminals who should be in jail.
The State Budget
By every measurement, the state budget is a shambles. The Governor points to a couple of up-ticks from Moody’s Investment advisories but we all know that these were temporary and primarily attributed to the covid relief dollars that were given to Illinois. We need to take a hard look at what we are spending tax dollars on, and we need to move to a zero-based budgeting system that requires all expenditures to be justified. Despite rising pension obligations the state has spent over a billion dollars paying for healthcare and housing for illegal migrants while there are citizens and veterans who are homeless and without the humanitarian response afforded non-citizens.
Education
The pandemic response taught us many things about how parents need to have a say in their children’s education. On the education front, we learned about the power of the teacher’s union and many parents who pulled their children out of public schools are learning about school vouchers and school choice. The number one responsibility of teachers is to educate our children in areas of science, math, language arts, and social studies, and based on test scores the schools are failing. The issue is not teachers’ salaries but rather the product. We need to work together to solve this problem because our state is failing our children. State mandates on our schools are forcing tax increases and state meddling in the curriculum in our schools is taking away our local control of our school districts.
Emergency Powers
The legislature needs to take up the issue of ‘emergency powers”, such as those exercised by the Governor during the Pandemic. Illinois should not brush this issue under the rug because the government’s handling of the situation was met with mistrust. The people of Illinois want to know that next time the legislature will not cede its role to any Governor. The governor continues to use emergency to address only the crises that he and the one-party controlled Illinois legislature deem priorities.
Immigration
The “migrant crisis” was created by the Illinois Legislature when they enacted the so-called “Trust” Act in 2017. The Trust Act prohibited law enforcement officers from working with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Illinois is also a “sanctuary” state and has incentivized “migrants” from all over the world to endanger their families to travel here. We need to repeal the Trust Act and renounce the “sanctuary” status that Illinois currently carries.
