Metro East Sun

With inflation causing prices to rise across all sectors of the state’s economy, Rep. Avery Bourne (R-Morrisonville) said it’s time to address the issue and provide some relief.

Bourne recently held a news conference where she said that inflation was causing families to make difficult decisions during the holiday season.

“Just today we saw that Kiplinger has rated Illinois the least tax-friendly state for middle class families,” she said. “So, while inflation is definitely impacting families across the nation, it is acutely impacting families here in Illinois that are already burdened with higher taxes. We hear a lot of stories at this time of year with inflation about how much the cost of a Thanksgiving meal is going to go up or how much Christmas gifts are going to go up, but it's so much more than that. It is groceries every single day and the cost of being able to heat your home. At the end of October overall inflation was 6.2%, which is the highest annual figure in my lifetime. My guess is most families aren't sitting around tracking the consumer price index but they don't need to feel the impact that inflation is having on their monthly budgets when they go to the grocery store.”

Illinois is ranked by Kiplinger at the bottom of its tax-friendly state list for middle class families with state taxes listed as the seventh-highest in the nation, and property taxes the second-highest in the country.

Bourne said that inflation was especially evident when families shop for groceries, which she feared could derail a family’s budget.

“We've seen it in our own family budget for groceries and for diapers, but it is impacting everything from baby food to meat, eggs milk, you name it,” she said. “It really is a huge impact. These small increases add up to make a huge difference in a family’s budget. We've seen that the average family's grocery bill has gone up 5.4%, which is probably anywhere from $570 to $712 a year, an increase in groceries or that they won't be able to buy groceries throughout the year in order to make their budgets work. So, 5.4% average, more specifically we’re looking at over 20% for bacon, 11.6% for eggs, 8.8% for chicken and baby food is up 8% over last year. So for a lot of families, we know that groceries make up a huge part of their budget and we're just talking about food, we're not talking about energy prices, which as winter begins, it's expected that for people to heat their homes, their costs will increase 54% compared to last year.”

The state saw its largest inflation jump in over 30 years during October’s price surge, according to CNBC.

“This hits home specifically for me. I had a friend and a constituent who contacted me last week and their family’s having a hard time replacing their furnace,” Bourne said. “Meanwhile, even if they are able to get it fixed, they will still be facing huge increases to heat their home. So, this is a real-world impact for a lot of families that we represent. This is a significant financial burden and while we may not be able to address at the state level the root cause of inflation, we can and we think it is our responsibility to provide relief and that's why today we are proposing an inflation tax relief for Illinois families.”