CHICAGO, IL — In an exclusive interview with Univision Chicago, Governor JB Pritzker highlighted his record of fostering Illinois’ economic growth while Darren Bailey and MAGA Republicans continue to stand by Donald Trump’s destructive agenda.
At a time when Trump’s war of choice and illegal tariffs are sending costs soaring and leaving working families to pay the price, Gov. Pritzker is delivering opportunity to Illinois. By supporting small businesses and attracting innovative industries to the state, he is bringing good-paying jobs and careers to Illinois.
Read excerpts below:
On Gov. Pritzker’s commitment to small businesses and job growth:
“If you want to build a great economy, you want to invest in small businesses. That’s where almost all of the job growth happens in an economy. It’s not the big businesses. And we’d love to have more big businesses, and we want them to grow. But it’s every small business that gets started that hires– perhaps they start by hiring their family members, then they end up hiring some neighbors or people who live in neighborhoods. And that’s what we’ve been doing… It’s something I believe in as governor. And we have indeed done that, both on the innovation side by helping people start start-up businesses and helping small businesses to grow bigger.”
On Gov. Pritzker’s commitment to clean energy:
“What we are doing is making sure that we’re increasing the amount of electricity that’s available in our state and doing it with clean energy. So, we’ve made massive investments… We’ve grown significantly, almost tripled the amount of renewables that we have. And we’ve ended the moratorium on nuclear so that we have the ability to have more nuclear in the state, and we are steadily reducing the amount of coal and natural gas.”
On Gov. Pritzker growing workforce development opportunities in future-forward industries:
“When we passed the CEJA, which is the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, we wrote into the law, in fact, an enormous training opportunity, particularly for people of color, because we realized that in the energy industry, they’ve been left out. The trades more broadly also needed to be beefed up. We need more people to get the kind of training that will allow them to do construction jobs, plumbers and carpenters, pipefitters, and so on. We put that into what is our infrastructure bill for the state, it’s the largest infrastructure bill ever, and in it is a program that helps to train folks for those jobs.”
On Illinois communities fighting back ICE and CBP’s attacks:
“In the face of that unprecedented attack, I think the community really came together. I mean, I feel as if we started on a good foot, putting people together, gathering the forces that would push back peacefully against what was happening. So, you may recall that the very first thing I think that publicly happened that gathered people together was I held a press conference with the business community, with the nonprofit community, with religious leaders, and we spoke the truth, which is we don’t want the federal government coming after the people who live in our city or in our state. That their attack on us is unwarranted, and it’s something that we don’t want, and we will not stand idly by for.”
On Gov. Pritzker on supporting Illinoisans who’ve lost their healthcare and SNAP benefits:
“People are losing their healthcare coverage and food assistance… I think I know the reason Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are taking those things away. They are doing it because they want to give massive tax breaks to the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest people in this country. It’s wrong. Our state is, in fact, pushing back on that. We’ve been working hard, first of all, to make sure that we’re covering all of the SNAP recipients as best we can… The other is, of course, we’ve had to invest in expanding free clinics and healthcare that may be available to people if they get thrown off of Medicaid.”
Full interview is available here.
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CONTACT: press@jbpritzkercampaign.com