Sangamon Sun

The reformist message Gov. Bruce Rauner took on his recent 10-city tour of Illinois can now be seen by anyone with internet access.

Rauner’s campaign committee, Citizens for Rauner, released a video on the governor’s YouTube channel showing clips from his stops on the two-day tour, which included suburban Chicago, Rockford, Peoria, Springfield, Quincy, East Alton, Marion and Robinson.

“More growth, more jobs, lower taxes, better schools and term limits on our elected officials, and redistricting reform so we have competitive general elections,” Rauner says in the video. “A new, positive direction for Illinois: That’s what we’re arguing about; that’s what we’re battling for.”

Rauner used the tour to push for reforms and measures in his “Turnaround Agenda” that he believes will stimulate economic growth. Key among his priorities is preventing tax increases, which Democratic candidates for next year’s governor’s race have supported. The state currently has a large budget deficit, and Democrats including Illinois Speaker of the House Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) support increasing the state income tax to help fill the gap.

Rauner, who has not yet announced a re-election bid, has pushed for reform in other areas to reduce spending, including consolidating some of Illinois’ 7,000 units of local government, which would reduce taxes from some of the multiple layers of government under which Illinois residents and businesses operate.

“We should be one of the fastest-growing states in America,” Rauner told an East Alton crowd. “We’re going to get big changes made, and then I’m travelling. I’m going over to St. Louis and bringing companies over here. I’m going over to Elkhart, Indiana, and bringing companies here. I’m going down to Dallas, Texas, and Houston and Austin and Nashville, Tennessee. We’re bringing companies back all over the great state of Illinois to grow opportunities and get higher family income for all the hard-working people in the state. That’s what we’re going to achieve together: a better future for all the people in Illinois.”

Rauner spoke throughout his tour about the lack of job growth in Illinois, saying government spending has increased by 66 percent over the past 17 years -- a period that saw no net increase in jobs and 200,000 manufacturing positions lost.

“I’ve had several of my friends who live in Quincy and Adams County who have decided they were tired of paying higher property taxes and they moved over to Missouri,” a Quincy resident who attended Rauner’s talk there said. “They have very nice houses and farms in Missouri -- a lot bigger than they could have in Illinois.”

Rauner wants the General Assembly to come to a budget agreement, but he wants it to be balanced through reform and changes to spending, not increased taxes. Throughout his tour, Rauner echoed television spots that equated tax increases to duct taping over a problem without finding a real solution. He cautioned that increasing taxes now would inevitably lead to increasing taxes again later, when spending has outstripped revenue because no measures were put in place to curb it.

“Let’s have our voice heard,” Rauner said in Springfield. “Let’s get the General Assembly to pass a balanced budget with structural changes so we can compete and grow our economy, so our children and our grandchildren have an outstanding future, and we have the most wonderful state in the greatest nation on Earth. God bless you. God bless the great state of Illinois.”