Illinois loss, Georgia gain 

On Friday it was official … Georgia will be the home for Caterpillar’s newest plant, to be built near Athens.  The plant will bring over 4,000 jobs to Georgia. 

There is one state that is particularly irate over this decision: Illinois.  After all, Caterpillar is based in Peoria, Ill.  But the business landscape has also changed a lot in Illinois.  You can thank Democrats and their go-to solution of raising taxes for this one.  You see, Illinois has been in a heap of fiscal squeeze for a long while.  So the brilliant minds in Illinois thought, “Hey, I know … let’s raise taxes to get ourselves out of this mess!”  So they did.  And the results were exactly what you and I would have predicted, but has left liberals baffled. 

When it comes to the business climate, Illinois raised its corporate tax rates by 45% in January 2011 to 7% from 4.8%.  Caterpillar officials made it pretty clear that this tax increase played a big part in their decision to open a new plant outside of Illinois.  Caterpillar cited the "business climate and overall fiscal health" of the state. 

Then there are personal income taxes.  Illinois also decided to raise those 66% to 5% from 3%.  Since raising those income taxes in January 2011, Illinois’ unemployment rate rose to 9.8% from 9% … at the same time when the unemployment rate dropped in 46 states.

And at the end of the day, Illinois has failed to solve the problem it originally intended to solve: its budget crisis.  Now with higher unemployment and businesses leaving the state, Illinois has managed to increase its debt by $2 billion and now has a deficit of $7 billion.

Now if Georgia could only address its income tax … imagine how many more companies would look to Georgia to build their next plant or headquarters?