Illinois Governor JB Pritzker officially announced his re-election campaign for a third term—setting the tone for another four years of real-life results for working families across our state.
Over the past six years, JB Pritzker has:
Lowered Costs for Working Families
- Created and recently doubled a state Child Tax Credit, saving working families up to $600 per year
- Eliminated the statewide sales tax on groceries
- Lowered the cost of child care for up to 80% of Illinois families
- Reduced the cost of prescription drugs, saving families thousands of dollars a year
- Raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour to give 1.4 million workers a raise and lift hundreds of thousands out of poverty
- Improved infrastructure across the state with Rebuild Illinois
- Protected military veterans by cutting property taxes and built a new Veterans’ retirement home
- Delivered guaranteed paid leave for workers
Expanded Quality, Affordable Health Care
- Enshrined reproductive rights in state law and expanded availability of care
- Lowered the cost of prescription drugs, including insulin, saving families thousands of dollars a year
- Eliminated medical debt for hundreds of thousands of middle class and low income families
- Expanded insurance coverage for mental health services, suicide prevention and substance abuse treatment
- Created the Birth Equity Initiative to lower maternal mortality rates, began licensing of midwives and expanded availability of doulas for new mothers
Stood Up to Trump, the ILGOP and MAGA Republicans
- Enacted a nation-leading law to guarantee the right to reproductive health care in the face of Trump’s attacks
- Fought back against attempts to rip health care away from up to 770,000 Illinoisans and millions of Americans
- Enacted first-in-the-nation defunding of libraries that engage in book bans in direct response to right-wing attacks on intellectual freedom.
- Challenged attempts to slash education funding for Illinois and dismantle the Department of Education
- Signed a first-in-the-nation executive order to protect Illinois residents’ health data from overreach by the Trump Administration
Building a Strong Fiscal Foundation
- Enacted 7 balanced budgets that invest in key priorities for working families
- Achieved 9 credit upgrades from ratings agencies after decades of consistent downgrades
- Increased the state pension funded ratio by fully funding pension contributions, increasing payments and expanding the pension buyout program to save taxpayers billions
- Attracted $1 billion in private and public investments in research centers across the state focused on Illinois’ innovation industries
Strengthened Rural and Downstate Communities
- Launched Connect Illinois to bring broadband internet access to rural Illinois
- Attracted billions into new manufacturing plants downstate, creating thousands of jobs
- Improved community college and university campuses and created new workforce training for jobs everywhere in Illinois
- Grew energy production downstate, creating jobs, modernizing the grids, and revitalizing communities.
- Launched the Rebuild Illinois infrastructure plan, which is building and repairing thousands of miles of roads and hundreds of bridges, along with river ports and airports across downstate Illinois
- Established two Manufacturing Training Academies to provide new skills to downstate residents in cutting edge industries and raise wages
Grown The Agriculture Industry
- Secured over $4 billion in commitments from overseas purchasers of Illinois corn and soybeans
- Expanded funding for vocational agriculture programs to train the farmers of tomorrow
- Made FFA membership dues free for every student and increased investment in Illinois’ 4H programs
- Supported the sales tax exemption for agricultural equipment and ensured it remained in Illinois tax code
- Expanded the Farm Family Resource Initiative to address the mental health needs of farming communities in all 102 counties
Fought for Opportunity & Justice
- Expanded voting rights to ensure every vote is counted and everyone’s voice can be heard
- Raised test scores among low-income elementary and middle school students and achieved the highest high school graduation rate in 14 years.
- Expunged cannabis-related arrest records for 780,000 Illinoisans to reduce their barriers to employment, housing and professional licenses
- Expanded health care and marriage equality protections and worked to eliminate HIV/AIDs in Illinois
- Directed hundreds of millions in cannabis revenue to communities historically harmed by violence, excessive incarceration, and economic disinvestment
- Enacted the historic reform agenda championed by the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus to address education, criminal justice, economy and health care
Improved Public Safety
- Banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stocks and high-capacity magazines
- Doubled funding for violence prevention, and violence intervention while boosting investments in mental health and substance use treatment
- Empowered judges to keep violent criminals off the streets by preventing them from buying their way out of jail
- Added hundreds of troopers to the Illinois State Police, including the largest cadet class in state history
- Built a state of the art forensics laboratory to assist in solving crimes, eliminated the longstanding backlog of rape kits, and funded an additional crime lab and new northern Illinois headquarters
Protected Women’s Rights
- Founded Think Big America, an organization dedicated to expanding abortion rights that supported efforts in six states to successfully pass pro-choice ballot initiatives
- Expanded access to birth control, making Illinois the second state in the Midwest to require that birth control be made available through pharmacists and without a doctor’s visit
- Expanded health care for children and pregnant women
- Enhanced protections for domestic violence survivors from retaliation by their abusers and provided funding to domestic violence shelters across the state
- Strengthened the Illinois Equal Pay Act to ensure equal pay for equal work
