When will Illinois fix business policies that force people and businesses to leave?

In 2011, Doug Oberhelman, then CEO of Caterpillar, penned a letter to then Governor Pat Quinn warning that the business policies in Illinois didn't foster future investment.

“In short, when Caterpillar and most other companies look to locate a new factory in the United States, Illinois is not in the running for such projects. It doesn’t have to be that way,” Oberhelman wrote.

Of course, we know the rest of the story. Just this year, Caterpillar announced the company is moving to Texas. Other companies such as Tyson, Citadel, Boeing, FTX and Highland Ventures have announced they are all leaving Illinois as well.

It is simple. Bad policies lead to bad outcomes. For instance, our governor locked down the economy during the pandemic. We lost countless small businesses because of his actions. It is going to take a long time to recover from his poor decision to shut down small businesses.

Houston, we have a problem.

We are losing businesses. We are losing people and what are our leaders doing about it?

Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman:Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman: Why we decided to invest and grow jobs in Illinois

The answer is not a thing. They won’t even entertain the question.

The Democrats and various members of the media love to brand my downstate colleagues and I as some sort of “extremists” but the truth is we ran for office because the current leadership in our state couldn’t run a lemonade stand let alone a state the size of Illinois. We pay some of the highest taxes in the nation and all we have to show for it is bad roads, failing schools, crumbling state parks, and incompetently run state agencies.

Our taxes are too high. Our state’s energy policies are making utilities too high. We have too many business regulations and we have some of the highest workers’ compensation costs in the nation. We will continue to be unable to compete with surrounding states as long as we keep ignoring the concerns of the business community. We can fix this. We just need the political will to get it done. 

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Illinois is located in the center of the country. There is no reason for Illinois to be losing companies. Bad leadership has created a hostile business environment – an environment the business community has warned us about for years. If we want to become a destination for jobs and opportunities, then we must heed the warnings of job creators and enact better policies.

Doing the same thing we have always done will only produce the same, failed results and produce more headlines about more businesses leaving. It is time for Democrats and Republicans to work together to bring jobs and opportunities back to Illinois and it can’t happen fast enough.

State Representative Chris Miller is Illinois Freedom Caucus chairman