Prairie State Wire

Blaine Wilhour, the state representative for Illinois House District 107, said that his legislative priorities include restoring public safety, expanding parental control in education, and reviving the state's economy by reducing taxes and regulations.

"We want to return to reasonable," said Blaine Jacob Wilhour, State Representative from Illinois. "We want to put parents in charge of education. We need to bring industry back to the state."

Illinois has seen heated debate in recent years over criminal justice reform, education funding, and economic regulation. In 2023, the state enacted the SAFE-T Act, becoming the first in the U.S. to eliminate cash bail—a move praised by reform advocates but criticized by opponents concerned about public safety. At the same time, Illinois residents face one of the highest combined state and local tax burdens in the country. According to the Illinois Policy Institute and the St. Louis Federal Reserve, this has prompted ongoing discussions about regulatory reform and fiscal policy.

In 2024, Illinois—particularly Chicago—saw a marked rise in violent crime, with 28,443 violent incidents reported in the city, marking a two-decade high. The Illinois Policy Institute reports that aggravated assaults were the most common offense, raising concerns about recent criminal justice reforms such as ending cash bail. This trend has fueled criticism from those questioning the state's approach to law enforcement and public safety.

Illinois ranks among states with the highest tax burdens; residents pay an average of $13,100 annually—about $4,500 more than the national average. The Tax Foundation and Illinois Policy Institute attribute this to factors including a flat 4.95% income tax rate, a 9.5% corporate tax rate, and high property taxes. These conditions have led to calls for structural tax reform to improve economic competitiveness.

Wilhour is a member of the Illinois House of Representatives representing the 110th District since 2019. According to the Illinois General Assembly, he is a farmer and business owner from Altamont and a veteran of the Illinois Army National Guard. He promotes fiscal conservatism, transparency, and limited government and has been outspoken against tax increases and expansive state spending.

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FULL, UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT

Bryan Hyde: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Prairie State Wire Podcast. I'm Brian Hyde, and today I'm joined by Illinois State Rep Blaine Wiler. He is the representative for District one 10 and Representative Wiler, first of all, for for those who are meeting you for the first time, could you just take a little moment to tell us about to who you are, a little bit about your background.

Rep. Blaine Wilhour: Yeah. No, I appreciate it, Brian. I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Like you said, I'm State Representative Blaine Wiler. I'm in my fourth term in the general Assembly. I first ran in in 2018. I represent the portions of South Central Illinois, so I'm basically about 75 miles straight east of St. Louis.

I'm kind of in between St. Louis, Missouri, and Para Haute, Indiana. I came into the generalist. Assembly because I'm a, I'm a small business owner. I own a construction company. Done that since, since I was, since I was very young in the, in the early twenties. And I just see what an adversarial government, what adversarial policies, especially in terms of regulation, have done to the state of Illinois.

Southern Illinois used to be great. [00:01:00] South central Illinois used to be great cities like Decatur and Peoria and even, even the smaller ones like Effingham and, and Vandalia in my area used to have industry. Frankly, politicians that get elected that are, that are beholden to corporate interest, big union interest, every interest, but the actual interest of the people of Illinois.

I come from a very blue collar background. I come from blue collar area 20 years ago. Everybody looks at Illinois right now and says that all of the southern Illinois is ruby red. Well, 20 years ago there were blue color Democrats. Down there. Right. But, but these bad policies drove all of that stuff out of there.

So I'm, I'm, I'm here trying to be a voice in the wilderness to say, Hey, we need to do some things different. We got major imbalances in the way that we spend money. We got major imbalances in, in the way that one part of the state up in the, in the city of Chicago and the suburbs dictates to the.

Everybody else, how we're going to operate both culturally and economically. And it's left way too many [00:02:00] people behind. We need more people in the general assembly that actually represent the people, the people that's forgotten for way too long. And that, and that's, that's what I do here. And believe me, we get plenty of opportunities to.

Bryan Hyde: I know that we can't lay blame explicitly at the feet of Governor JB Pritzker, but let's talk a little bit about where the state is headed under his leadership. 'cause it doesn't sound like he's changing course from some of the challenges that you've just described in terms of leading the state into deeper blue territory.

Rep. Blaine Wilhour: Well, JB Pritzker, since the moment he set foot in the, in the governor's mansion, he has been concerned about his next role. I mean, the, the whole time, every policy that, that he pushes is to try to push Illinois more. To the progressive left so that he can say that he's the most progressive governor in the, in the country, so that he can try to become president in 2028, which I think is, is extremely laughable because the guy's never really been under a microscope with the media that we have in, in Illinois.

And when he gets on the national [00:03:00] level, I think he's gonna see that. But the, at the end of the day, everything that he is done for, for the state has moved us backwards. Has in, has, has anybody in the state of Illinois, especially the people that he. Sports to, to uplift. Has any quality of life increased in the past six or seven years?

The, the, that he's been here? I think that that would be a resounding no from every community, from Chicago to Cairo. That unless you're a legal immigrant, your life has probably, your quality of life has probably not increased in the state of Illinois. He has blown the budget wide open. I came here in 2019, that was my first year. We're spending $15 billion more just in our discretionary budget from when I came in.That's set up a floor on our budget. This basically a tax increase waiting to happen, and he has increased taxes by billions of dollars. He's been here, we're facing, uh, at least a billion dollar budgetary hold this, this year.

They're, they're actually [00:04:00] forecasting in the next five years, $20 billion hold. The guy has been a, he, he is, he is been a failure. He is been a complete failure in every one of these, in every one of these aspects. And our streets aren't safe. Our education system is, is, is in shambles, but we're not doing anything to fix any of these problems.

That's the issue here. If, if we just did some, some reform. To get us in the middle of the pack. Regulatory wise, we unleashed our energy, energy sector in this state. If we and and put some competition in our education system, I think that you would see that Illinois has a lot to offer and we could turn around really, really quick.

We got every advantage going for us here. We just need better politicians that actually care about Illinois. J JB Pritzker does not care about Illinois right now. He's using it as a stepping stone to, for his, for his political fantasies. And, and, and that's not right because there are real issues in Illinois that need to be dealt with in a serious way.

Bryan Hyde: To what extent do special interests [00:05:00] shape Governor Pritzker's goals or ambitions? I'm, I'm curious if, if they have an, an outsized influence on, on the kind of policies that he pursues. 

Rep. Blaine Wilhour: Well, I mean, JB Pritzker's actually in a very unique position that if he was willing to, he could, he could make some of these changes because JB Pritzker does not need the finance.

Here from, from both parties is, is controlled to some extent by big money, special interests that, that come in here and, you know, shower politicians with all kinds of money and make it really easy to do the, do the things that they want to do. But it just perpetuates the status quo here. But JB Pritzker, he is a, he is a multi-billionaire.

He doesn't need these, these people. He could come in here and make some of these series. Reforms because when you talk about serious reforms there, there's a lot of politicians that, that almost every politician will talk about how the property tax system is outta control in the state of Illinois. What are they doing about it?

The only things that they've ever done about it is [00:06:00] they put task force after task force to sit here and look at it and do all this stuff. Well, anybody with any ounce of knowledge knows that if you're gonna lower property taxes, you're gonna have to deal with the big cost drivers in our budget that are, that are driving it up.

You're gonna have to deal, deal with the pension system. The, which were hundreds of billion, billions of dollars into hold, that's feeding up over 20% of our budget every year. You're gonna have to deal with the sheer volume of government. We've got almost 8,000 units of government in, in the state. That's more than Texas and California, and they're double, quadruple our, our, our population that's sucking the taxpayers dry.

But man, I tell you, if you, if you actually sat out an agenda to deal with. Some of that stuff, you're gonna get some very powerful pushback from very well-funded special interest groups, and that's frankly why it doesn't get done here. I've, I've pushed a lot of those initiatives. I've pushed school choice for, for an example, I fought back very hard on the Invest kids stuff and I brought out on the floor that the, that the president of the Illinois Education Association [00:07:00] sees fit to send his kids to.

Catholic private schools, but he doesn't think that it's appropriate that poor kids do the can do the same thing. Well, when you do that kind of stuff, you get a lot of pushback. I, I, I faced, uh, hundreds of thousands of dollars in, in, in primaries from these special interest groups, both in 2018 and just in, in 2024.

And we were able to defeat those guys and we defeated them soundly because, because we're bold. We put out a message. People in Illinois are hungry. They're hungry for, for something different. They're, we can't sit on the sidelines on that stuff anymore. We can't go along. To get along. We gotta come here, we gotta shake up this system, and we gotta actually speak for the taxpayers.

And if you're gonna do that, you're gonna get pushback. But that's, that's what we're here for. And just in the past, in, in the, in the past few weeks, you've seen this, this, this assault on homeschooling and, and, and private education. They, they, the. Illinois education Industrial complex is [00:08:00] what is what I like to call it.

It's a, it's a combination of the union power and the bureaucracy and all of this stuff. They don't want any competition at all. And homeschooling, especially post covid and private schooling, is the fastest form of fastest growing form of education in the country. And so it has to be tamped down. It has to, the state has to put their finger on it, or they think they do.

So they, they do these. Bills that are putting their finger on them people, the nonsense that they're being taught, they don't like the fact that one out of every 10 African American in Chicago public school is reading at grade level. They don't like the fact that three out of 10 of, of all of the students in the state of Illinois are not reading at grade level.

They don't like the fact that 30, there's over 30 schools in the state of Illinois. We're not a single kid, is proficient in reading. That's completely ridiculous. So they're, they're trying to escape this system, but the [00:09:00] system keeps trying to want to suck them in. But the point of the thing is, the, the, it was shown that righteous indignation from the public makes a difference.

People activated. They stood up. They, they came. These homeschool kids and these private school people, they came to the capitol. They flooded the dome. They had to actually had to shut it down. There was so many, so many in there. They were at capacity and they made their voices heard and they said that, Hey, this isn't a political issue.

This isn't a left right issue. This is a parent's rights issue and they put enough pressure on politicians that that bill is sitting back in rules committee now, and it's not because of anything that any single politician done. I, I work very hard on that. Several other people work very hard on that, but we work hard on everything, right?

It's only when the public gets involved. They put their, they, they put the pressure down on this kind of stuff. That, that you actually see the, you actually see the change and you see some, when I think Everett Dirksen said it, when politicians [00:10:00] fill the heat, they see the light and they're seeing the light.

So that's a, that's a lesson for. For the Republican party and for politicians in general that, hey, we got our more bull. When we believe in something, we need to push back. We need to fight, fight, fight. The Republican party has not done enough of that, and that's why we're in the situation in the, in the Overton window.

You know what you, what what you allow these people. People to normalize is what you're going to have to continue dealing with, and it continues to get worse. If we don't start being bold and start pushing back on this stuff, it's just gonna, it, it is just gonna continue to progressively get worse. The, we showed with this thing that we can push back, we can engage the public.

The public is out there and they're ready to be engaged. They just need some, they need some leadership and direction and lot to learn from the coalition that was brought to do that. That was, that was. Urban inner city, African Americans, Hispanics, and teaming up with, with very rural [00:11:00] downstate. It, it, it's a, it is a very powerful combination and it's something that I think that we need to look at.

If we're gonna win elections in the, in, in, in the upcoming years, we're gonna have to rebuild the coalition in the Republican party, much like Donald Trump has done on a national level. And I think that's a good template to use. 

Bryan Hyde: I, I'm curious, what are the, what are the suggested regulations or what are some of the regulatory goals for those who are opposed to homeschooling?

I, I watched a little bit of a video of a, of a hearing that you were a part of and, and it's clear there's some strong distrust of, of homeschooling by those who prefer a compulsory government run school system. What do they hope to achieve in terms of further regulation? 

Rep. Blaine Wilhour: Honestly, I think it's more fear of the, of the.

What they're actually doing in homeschooling. All the data says the by and large, the, the homeschool kids do much better when it comes to SATs and things of, things of that nature. But basically they, they, they want to get their finger [00:12:00] in on the, on the curriculum. They, they want to be able to do curriculum checks for these, these homeschool parents.

They want to be able to, they wanna be able to tie 'em to the school code. That that's the, I mean, this bill does a lot of different things, but at the end of the day, they want everybody tied to that school code and inside that school code, it mandates certain curriculum. And just two years ago. They were trying to pass Senate bill 8 1 8, which was that really, really perverse sex education bill that was teaching very inappropriate and age, very inappropriate age level stuff there.

They wanted to put that into school code, right? So you see where the, where the left wants to go with it. Stuff. And that's the, that's the fear. People are going to these private religious schools and they're going to home schools that choose not to be recognized by the, by the state of Illinois, because they want to get away from that stuff.

They don't want to be tied to the, to the school code. They make [00:13:00] sacrifices as far as not being recognized. They can't, when they're not recognized, they can't compete in some of the sports, they can't do a lot of this stuff. So these schools. And these homeschool kids are making tremendous ion in the, in the way the, the, the families and the parents think are, are, are necessary.

And when you, and when you tell those people that, that they're basically gotta be tied to the school code, that's against everything that, that they believe in. That's again. Everything that they're escaping and, and, and it, frankly, everything that's, that's failing because the school code, it may not say stuff in it right now, but we know how this stuff works.

That school code is, it, it's at the discretion of the will and the whim of, of the legislature. And the legislature is clearly laid out where, where they're at, on. On all, all of this stuff and they just want nothing to do with it. And they stood up and, and and fought, and so far were winning. 

Bryan Hyde: You had mentioned earlier illegal immigration, and I just wanted to check with you, obviously at the national level, there has been a very [00:14:00] drastic shift in terms of closing down the border in terms of deportations, even though there's a lot of that being litigated right now.

How has Illinois been affected since. The, the Trump administration has come in has, I know that Illinois was a, was a sanctuary state, or at least there were those who were, were calling it that. Ha. Have things changed in in that regard? I. 

Rep. Blaine Wilhour: Illinois is still a sanctuary state, and the President Trump actually did JB Pritzker a big, a big favor.

They were, they said that all through this campaign, everything was said, well, we gotta pass all this legislation and all of this. It's gonna take years and years and years to close the border. Well, Trump got in there and we're less than a hundred days in and I think that everybody would pretty much agree.

Right now the border is, the border is basically closed. We, we've got an issue with all of the legals in here, the, the Joe Biden and the Democrats and all the, all those people led in here. But the border is effectively closed and it is closed because the, the executive orders and the actual actions, the, [00:15:00] the executive branch under President Trump, and it actually did Pritzker a big solid because we're, as a sanctuary state, we're taking in.

And thousands of illegal immigrants every year, and it costs money. It's costing the state of Illinois at least $3 billion a year to, to facilitate this stuff. We've got people say $3 billion hole in the budget this year. I. So a, a really quick way to be able to fix that is to say that, Hey, we're not a sanctuary state anymore.

And start and stop. Stop providing. As long as you're providing free healthcare and you're not reporting anybody to ice, you're not doing any of this stuff, you let 'em sign up for all these entitlement programs. Of course, they're gonna come here, and that's not their fault necessarily. But the fact of the matter is we can't afford it.

We have citizens of Illinois that have been abused and neglected for for years. [00:16:00] Yeah, we're paying the highest state and local taxes in the, in, in the country. All right? So we need to take care of our own, own citizens and we need to actually start pri prioritizing that. And the more that we do that, the more we're gonna see that we can, we don't have the budgetary constraints that, that we thought they did, and the stress that they're putting on the education system, which they're getting no money for, but we're still paying for it.

So it's a, it's a huge problem. JB Pritzker can talk all he wants about all of this stuff, but until he fixes the sanctuary state issue here in Illinois, we're gonna continue to have that issue. They're not only illegal, which is criminal on its own. They've actually committed crimes that they've been sent to jail for.

They're not allowing ICE to go into those facilities and deport them or put them in the deport deportation process in the most unsafe way for the, for the criminal and for the police officers. Now [00:17:00] they're, they're not allowing that. In fact, in a lot of cases there's been reports from the federal agencies on ICE that they're not even allowing 'em to sit in the parking lot and wait for 'em.

It's completely outrageous. 

Bryan Hyde: Alright, we're, we're down to the last couple of moments of, of the podcast today. Representative Blaine Wil Hower is our guest. Is there any take home message that you would like to direct to our listeners as far as policy or focus that, that you would like to, to point out to them and, and tell 'em is, is worthy of their attention?

Rep. Blaine Wilhour: Well, I think the, the, the biggest attribute that anybody can have in public office now, and the biggest thing that any voter needs to look at is, does this person have courage? I'll take somebody with, with courage over somebody that I agree with on every policy issue every day of the week. Because we are in a state, in this, in this country, and especially in Illinois, where there are no answers for any of this stuff, any of the problems that we have.

They're not easy answers. And I go, your comment come against. Very powerful special interests, but you need [00:18:00] to make sure that you're electing people that have the courage to do what needs to be done. And quite frankly, have the courage to, to, to stand up and fight because you're gonna have to fight back and the citizens are gonna have to be engaged on this stuff.

We can change this state, um, but it's gonna, it is gonna require a lot of hard work, and it's going to be on the backs of the citizens of this state when they say Enough is enough. We're done with crazy. We're done with woke. We're tired of JB Pritzker and all of the garbage that he is pushed down our throats.

We wanna return to re reasonable, all right? We wanna make crime illegal again in, in this state, something that JB Pritzker is not willing to do. We wanna, we wanna put parents in charge of education 'cause they, they know what's best for their, for their kids. And we need to, we, we need to bring industry back to the state, which is gonna require us to, to lower taxes and lower regulations.

But if you're gonna do any of that. You gotta be tough, so you gotta make, make sure that you're electing people that are tough enough to [00:19:00] do it. 

Bryan Hyde: Again, we've been visiting with Representative Blaine Wiler for District one 10 of the great state of Illinois. Thank you so much for your time. 

Rep. Blaine Wilhour: No, thank you. I appreciate it very much.

Bryan Hyde: This is the Prairie State Wire Podcast.