Galesburg Reporter

Illinois state Sen. Win Stoller (R-Germantown Hills) expressed concern that recently passed legislation that provides incentives to state taxpayers will raise interest rates.

Senate Bill 157 created several incentives for taxpayers in the state and gives them relief after the high inflation the country is currently experiencing. Those incentives, however, were temporary and will end after this fall's election. 

The bill passed the Senate and the House unanimously, although Republicans did not seem pleased with the legislation. It advanced from the House on April 9.

"There’s just one other aspect I don't know if we are fully taking into account, and that is with the delay we’ve got it [is] interest rates that are likely to go up," Stoller said during an April 9 Senate floor session. "And, on one hand, I’m concerned that if borrowing is a part of the plan going forward, that's going to cost us more money. But, here’s something else. The reason interest rates are going up is because inflation is out of control. It's spiraling out of control and the Fed is finally getting aggressive, and they're signaling a series of half-point increases in interest rate, which is very, very aggressive, and the reason they're doing that is because that is how you start to get inflation under control. But, the trick here, [it is] really, really hard to walk that interest-rate-increase tightrope without falling off and causing a recession." 

Stoller's speech continued. 

"History shows that sometimes, the only way to stop out-of-control inflation is, unfortunately, a painful recession, so here we might be in a position of entering a recession in a position of extreme weakness. Already billions of dollars in debt, already having higher taxes on our employers, already having employees in that situation, having reduced benefits when we enter a recession and have the related spike in unemployment. Other states that took action are not going to be in that position. They’re going to be in a position to take care of that – their employees who need unemployment benefits in their time of need – but we are shortchanging ours; kicking the can down the road doesn't solve our problems. Delaying action doesn't solve our problems. In fact, it's these delays that got us in the mess that we are in in the first place, and I do not think we should be heading down that path."

Senate Bill 157 also created the Manufacturing Illinois Chips for Real Opportunity (MICRO) Act, which was a big selling point for Republican legislators. The MICRO Act will create tax incentives for manufacturers of semiconductors, microchips, or semiconductor or microchip component parts.