Escape to Wisconsin!

Like anybody ever needed more incentive to move out of Illinois:

The Illinois House handed Gov. Quinn a major legislative victory Tuesday by narrowly passing a 66-percent increase in the state income tax, setting up a potential vote in the state Senate.

Victory! Whoohoo!

The measure to increase the amount the state withholds from workers’ paychecks from 3 percent to 5 percent passed by a 60-57 vote. Sixty votes was the bare minimum needed for passage.

…

The roll call on the tax vote, which boosted the corporate income tax from 4.8 percent to 7 percent, fell strictly along party lines with no Republicans supporting the plan. The tax increase, which would amount to an $800 annual hit to a family with a $40,000 household income, would take effect immediately.

The (relative) good news (I guess): another bill to hike the cigarette tax by $1.01 a pack failed. But:

Quinn faced another setback Tuesday evening when the House voted down a bid to borrow $8.75 billion to pay a multibillion-dollar backlog of unpaid bills owed to state vendors.

Holy crap, how do you run up unpaid bills of $8.75 billion? Who’s running things down there, a bunch of drunken teenagers with Dad’s credit card?

Here’s the deal, though: businesses don’t just like low taxes and unintrusive regulations. They like consistency. Predictability. A business isn’t just going to uproot and move to…oh, let’s just say Wisconsin…because of a tax hike. They want to know that the economic environment is better now, and that it’ll stay better for the next 20 years.

So lemme ask all you Illinois businesses: which government do you think is more likely to become/remain liberal, collectivist, and profligate? Illinois’? Or Wisconsin’s?

More: Anne Leary writes:

Dems may have voted to end the death penalty for convicted felons…but enacting the highest tax increase in Illinois history puts the Land of Lincoln on death row.

Hey, now, Anne: watch that eliminationist rhetoric.