Prairie State Wire

Former state House candidate Peter Breen laments residents across the state are finding out the hard way just who Gov. J.B. Pritzker is.

“The governor has the reputation of having been a businessman; in truth he is a man who was a billionaire from birth that has merely invested,” Breen told the DuPage Policy Journal. “I don’t think he has any idea of what it takes to run a small business and no sense of having to struggle to keep a business afloat.”

Breen argues that lack of business knowledge is why Pritzker has been so aggressive in pressing forward with his statewide minimum wage increase even as small businesses across the state struggle to reopen after they were forced to shutter for the last three months by his stay-at-home order.

Still, the governor has made it clear he would not delay the minimum wage increase to $10 an hour that kicked in on July 1. Wages are slated to increase by another dollar per hour on Jan. 1, 2021.

“People struggling to stay afloat can’t take any more cost right now,” Breen added. “The governor would be wise to pause the increases as the industries hardest hit by all this fight to stay afloat and keep their employees. There is no harm in hitting the delay button during the worst economic crisis of our lifetime.”

With the state having recently moved to Phase 4 of the governor’s five-phase Restore Illinois plan, which allows some businesses to open with fewer restrictions, Breen hopes it’s not too little, too late.

“In the wake of coronavirus, every other state around us has taken steps to rein in government spending and regulation, but in Illinois we are giving large pay increases to our state workers who are already the highest paid in the country,” he said. “It’s not fair during a pandemic to take money from people and give in to well-paid individuals whose jobs are already guaranteed through the crisis.”