Pritzker focuses on history, ‘affordability,’ in 8th State of the State address

Gov. JB Pritzker delivers his budget address on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. The speech was heavy with historical references to former Illinois governors and criticisms of the Trump administration. (Capitol News Illinois photo by Jerry Nowicki)

SPRINGFIELD — Gov. JB Pritzker focused on the economic challenges that both state government and ordinary families are facing in his combined budget address and State of the State speech Wednesday.

And while his speech was loaded with historical references that he used to illustrate Illinois’ resiliency in the face of challenging times, it was also crafted around modern political themes that are likely to weigh heavily in the upcoming 2026 midterm elections, as well as a potential presidential campaign in 2028.

That included a reference to the Trump administration’s efforts to force cities and states to remove rainbow-colored crosswalks.

Read more: Pritzker proposes $56B budget with minimal new spending, tax on social media companies

“Meanwhile, the President is making life harder and less affordable with tariff taxes on working families and small businesses, trade wars, devastating farmers, cuts to health care, food assistance and education, imposing increased bureaucracy on states,” Pritzker said.

“Affordability” was a key theme in Pritzker’s address, just as it has been for Democrats nationwide during this year’s campaign cycle.  It was also one that Trump himself used successfully in his 2024 presidential campaign, although he has since described the issue as a “hoax.”

“Everything is just too damned expensive, and that’s why now, more than ever, we must work together to make life more affordable for Illinois’ working families,” Pritzker said.

During the speech, Pritzker boasted of accomplishments during his first two terms in office that he said have helped make life more affordable for Illinoisans, such as increasing funding for student financial aid to make higher education more affordable and negotiating to eliminate more than $1 billion worth of medical debt for more than half a million Illinois residents.

He also outlined some of his legislative proposals for the upcoming year. Those include a new housing initiative aimed at removing barriers to new housing construction, paving the way for the development of new nuclear power generation, a renewed call for more state regulation of homeowners insurance rates and pleading with businesses to increase workers’ wages.

“So it’s time for every business to get in the game, step up to the plate, raise wages and help lower the cost of living for Illinois families,” Pritzker said.

Historical perspective

Although Pritzker stressed the importance of the challenges Illinois faces today, he also took time to put them in historical perspective. He noted that the nation will mark the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence this summer and that since the early days of the republic, Illinois has played a key role in the nation’s development.

“I think to lead it’s important to be a student of history,” he said. “If you have the courage to confront all of our past — the good and the bad, the hopeful and the messy — history has the power to inform a better future.”

He also recalled an earlier State of the State address by one of his predecessors, Illinois’ 20^th governor, Gov. John Peter Altgeld, who served from 1893 to 1897.

In his 1895 address, the text of which ran 60 pages, Pritzker said Altgeld reflected on the challenges facing the state at that time.

“He talked about the need to ensure that science would govern the practice of medicine in Illinois, the high cost of insurance, the condition of Illinois prisons, the funding of state universities, a needed revision of election laws, the concentration of wealth in large businesses and a section entitled women in public service,” Pritzker said. “That last part starts with Altgeld’s pride about appointing women to positions in state government well before women had the right to vote.”

Pritzker also focused on Altgeld’s response to President Grover Cleveland sending federal troops into Chicago in 1894 to quell what’s now known as the Pullman strike.

“His anger at the federal government’s overreach jumps off the page even 131 years later,” Pritzker said.

Quoting Altgeld, he said: “If the President can, at his pleasure, send troops into any city, town, or hamlet…whenever and wherever he pleases, under pretense of enforcing some law — his judgment, which means his pleasure being the sole criterion — then there can be no difference whatever in this respect between the powers of the President and those of…the Czar of Russia.”

Few budget details

During the speech, Pritzker spent more time talking about those proposals and his administration’s previous accomplishments than he did on the details of his budget plan for the upcoming year, largely because the proposed budget contains few, if any, bold new initiatives.

Overall, Pritzker proposed just over $56 billion in General Revenue Fund spending for the fiscal year that begins July 1. That represents a 1.6% increase over the current budget — an increase that is almost entirely due to required increases in pension contributions and K-12 education funding as well as the rising cost of health care, which is reflected in the state’s Medicaid budget and state employee medical costs.

Due to expected flat growth in the state’s major revenue streams — individual and corporate income taxes and sales taxes — Pritzker is proposing a few modest revenue enhancements, including a new “social media platform fee” that is projected to generate $200 million.

He did not propose any new taxes on corporations or upper-income individuals, as some more progressive-leaning lawmakers and interest groups have called for.

He did, however, blame the Trump administration for causing much of the state’s fiscal uncertainty through federal economic policies and the withholding of an estimated $8.4 billion in federal funds that he said is owed to the state.

“That is how much the Trump administration has cost the people of Illinois, alongside many other states,” Pritzker said. “Illinois is fighting more than 50 cases in court where the federal government is illegally confiscating money that has already been promised and appropriated by the Congress to the people of Illinois.”

Republican reaction

Legislative Republicans were quick to criticize the speech, saying it sounded more like a campaign stump speech than a budget or State of the State address.

“Today, Gov. Pritzker, he had a budget address all about blame,” House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, R-Savanna, said in a post-speech news conference. “For Illinois families, that means zero accountability, zero ownership, for the fiscal mess that they are living in.”

Deputy Minority Leader Norine Hammond, R-Macomb, called it “déjà vu all over again,” adding that “Pritzker remains focused on running for president rather than working to address the issues that we are facing here in the state of Illinois.”

GOP lawmakers generally did not defend Trump’s withholding of federal funds from Illinois, but some did criticize the combative relationship that Pritzker has had with the Trump administration, saying that also has harmed the interests of Illinois.

“What’s happening between Illinois and the federal government is happening nationally with every state,” Senate Minority Leader John Curran, R-Downers Grove, said in a news conference Tuesday. “And it is incumbent upon our state leaders – and that is the governor, our U.S. Senate delegation and our congressional delegation – to advocate zealously for Illinoisans and Illinois in that process.”

He says other states with less antagonistic leaders are having better results than Illinois.

“So I have severe questions about the approach which is antagonistic rather than being productive in approach,”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.