Democrat Pritzker urges progressive income tax and single payer health care

J.B. Pritzker | Northwest Herald photo

CHICAGO – Last week, Democrat gubernatorial hopeful J.B. Pritzker told a northside Chicago group he wanted to push Illinois into a progressive income tax system and favors single payer health care. 

The Chicago businessman said he planned to circumvent the state's constitutional ban on graduated/progressive income taxation.

He would not try to change the constitution at all, but would raise the presumably flat tax, then give "personal exemptions" to as many as it takes to do graduated/progressive taxation without calling it that, Jim Bowman of OakPark.com writes on his news blog.

"I'm running on this," Pritzker told them, without resorting to a constitutional convention, where "too many bad things can happen," he told an audience of 40 or so citizens in a meeting hosted by 40th Ward Alderman Patrick O'Connor.

O'Connor, a Democrat, has not yet endorsed in the race – despite having hosted primary candidates Pritzker and Chris Kennedy at ward meetings.

Bowman reports that Pritzker also said:

* He's opposed to taxing stock buying and selling, a "La Salle Street tax," because there's no longer a pit where signals are given but electronic buying and selling, and it's "easy" for them to move out of state. Pritzker instead wants to "keep traders here," because of lost "opportunities to tax their incomes."

• He favors "a public option . . . single-payer" system " for health care.

UPDATE: The IR report originally reported the meeting in Oak Park. Instead, it was on Chicago's northside.