On Monday, February 26, The Xavierite had the opportunity to interview Illinois gubernatorial canidate, JB Pritzker.
Pritzker is an investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the managing partner and co-founder of the Pritzker Group who is looking to become governor of Illinois to improve the many issues that the state is currently facing.
If elected, one of the subjects Pritzker would like to handle is making sure that immigrant families and DREAMers are protected from the threat of the DACA program being removed.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re protecting DREAMers here in the state of Illinois. We can do that by first enforcing the Trust Act, which protects undocumented immigrants in the state from the state turning over their information to the federal government and making sure that our officials here in the state are not leading the federal government to the doors of our immigrants,” Pritzker said.
“Second, we need to make sure that we’re standing up for immigrant families both documented and undocumented who are under threat by Donald Trump. We of course have the opportunity to expand coverage of the Trust Act to other areas which haven’t been included in the Trust Act Up to now.”
Illinois is currently dealing with numerous financial troubles and Pritzker plans to resolve those issues by getting a balanced budget.
“First, we have to be responsible about getting a budget passed. Second, we have to actually have a balanced budget. It’s a requirement of the Constitution of the state of Illinois that the governor introduced a balanced budget and not once in Bruce Rauner’s four years, or four times, producing a budget has he actually introduced the constitutionally required balanced budget so, we need to do that. But we also need to make sure that we’re recognizing the elements of what it is to have a balanced budget. We need to not only look at expenditures and revenues, but also at growth because we haven’t had any job growth in the state of Illinois.”
Gun violence is another problem that Illinois faces and Pritzker wants to take a public health approach and treat it as a public health epidemic.
“It’s a different approach than the traditional one in that the idea is just like a disease you want to interrupt the disease. You want to treat the disease. And essentially you want to cure a community. And so that requires us to treat it not as simply a law enforcement issue but making sure that we’re interrupting it on the street”.
Programs such as CeaseFire Pritzker says need to continue to be funded because it is an effective program that keeps people from joining gangs and keeps violence off the streets.
“There are programs like CeaseFire, which is a program that sends people into the streets to work with those mostly young men who have weapons and who might otherwise be committing a crime, to work with them to try to help them avoid getting involved in gangs avoid getting involved in violent crime. That’s been very effective (CeaseFire) and it’s something that I think the state needs to make sure that we fund. You know, gun violence in many ways is an epidemic and in order to treat that epidemic, we have to focus on prevention and intervention wherever we can by investing in programs like CeaseFire. We’ve got to restore funding for community organizations and human services.”
Pritzker went on to discuss how he would like to make a college education affordable for all and he that students should have access to a quality education.
“I personally believe that anybody who cannot afford a college education should get a free college education and we need to make sure that we’re providing access to a good quality education so that kids don’t end up strapped with debt for the rest of their lives.” said Pritzker.
“I also want to help people refinance their college loans which I think we can do using state resources. And then finally I think it’s very important for us to focus on the faculty in maintaining the programs that are so important for our universities which are some of the best universities in the nation.”
Many students, including those here at Saint Xavier, depend on the MAP grant in order to attend college and Pritzker wants to make sure these grants continue through the four years of a student’s college education.
“Many students were afraid that they wouldn’t receive their map grants and had to make decisions about whether to take the chance that they will get their map grant or instead to choose to simply leave the state of Illinois. So, we need to make sure that we’re providing not just the map grant funding but some visibility into the four years of a college education and the availability of MAP grants throughout.” Pritzker mentions.
“We’ve got to make sure that we’re investing in our universities because honestly the most important resource of the state of Illinois is our people and our educated dedicated workforce. That’s why people want to invest in Illinois when they do. And it’s why people create jobs here. Because we’ve got the best educated most dedicated workforce in the nation. And look at why would Amazon look to Illinois to move here. Because Chicago is the second largest college town in America and that’s an important attractor as is the high level of education of many of our residents.”
Recently, Pritzker was endorsed by the Chicago Sun-Times. He goes on to mention the various things that he has accomplished that he believes has set him apart from the other candidates running for governor. One of them being creating jobs in Illinois.
“I think one of the things that they paid close attention to is that I’m the only candidate in this race that’s thinking about the future and job creation and the economy of the state of Illinois investing not just in the job creation capability of our state, but also in making sure that our labor unions are strong here so that we raise wages in the state that in the course of raising wages by raising the minimum wage, we also can create jobs because as I say, there’s a false choice that many people make in other states. Frankly, there are governors making that somehow if you have higher wages you can’t create jobs.”
Pritzker founded 1871, a non-profit small business incubator which in the last 5 years, is responsible for creating 7,000 new jobs in Illinois, and is ranked among the top ten tech hubs in the world.
“I’ve founded 1871 that I’ve helped to create thousands and thousands of jobs in Illinois and I’m proud of my record. And I was thrilled to see the Sun Times recognize that degree.”
You can listen to the complete interview below:
Elizabeth Granato
Editor in Chief