Check out the information below to learn how the President's plan will impact Illinois.

KEEPING MORE OF YOUR MONEY

4,050,000 taxpayers in Illinois will have lower income tax bills in 2003 under the President’s growth package.

1,042,000 business taxpayers can use their tax savings to invest in new equipment, hire additional workers, and increase pay.

HELPING AMERICANS GET STARTED

3,115,000 married couples and single filers will benefit from the acceleration to 2003 of the expansion of the 10-percent bracket scheduled for 2008.

HELPING ALL AMERICANS WHO PAY TAXES

1,363,000 taxpayers in Illinois will benefit from the acceleration to 2003 of the reductions in income tax rates in excess of 15-percent scheduled for 2004 and 2006.

HELPING MARRIED COUPLES
1,544,000 married couples in Illinois will benefit from the acceleration to 2003 of provisions that increase the standard deduction for joint filers to double the amount for single filers and increase the width of the 15-percent bracket to twice the width for single filers. These two provisions were scheduled to phase in between 2005 and 2009.

HELPING PARENTS

1,122,000 married couples and single parents in Illinois will benefit from the acceleration to 2003 of the increase in the child tax credit from $600 to $1,000 that was scheduled to phase in between 2005 and 2010.

END THE UNFAIR PRACTICE OF DOUBLE TAXATION

1,504,000 taxpayers in Illinois will benefit from the exclusion of dividends paid from previously-taxed corporate income.

SOURCE: Counts are for the number of returns filed in 2001 that would have benefited from the package. These estimates are based on tabulations from all individual income tax returns processed by the Internal Revenue Service in 2001. Most of these returns covered tax year 2000.

"I appreciated the opportunity to discuss an issue with the president that is important to many families and seniors I represent," said Fitzgerald.

Traveling with the president between Chicago and Washington, Fitzgerald encouraged President Bush to consider increased funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). LIHEAP is the primary federal program available to help low-income families and senior citizens with high home energy costs. These two groups, Fitzgerald explained, often shoulder a higher energy-cost burden then other Americans, spending up to 20 percent of their income on home energy bills.

Fitzgerald believes LIHEAP funding should be increased to reflect recent forecasts, which indicate that the price of home heating fuels could rise 19 percent for natural gas and 45 percent for heating oil. The requested funding levels for 2003 could leave more than 530,000 eligible households and senior citizens nationwide without any assistance, Fitzgerald told the president.

Final LIHEAP funding will be included in the 2003 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriation bill to be approved by Congress and signed by the president early this year.

"As Congress begins a new session, the president’s support for LIHEAP could provide momentum to help ensure the home-heating needs of low-income families and seniors in Illinois and across the country are addressed," said Fitzgerald.

For many years I've been proclaiming that conservatives generally can be counted on to propound good ideas--and that's the truth, but there's one exception: term limits. A group that proclaims it wants to be free of governmental restrictions but then bypasses the people by enacting artificial limits on governmental service is hypocritical. There should be no restriction on the voters to elect and repeatedly re-elect whomever they choose.

When Republicans took over the U.S. House, they foolishly applied eight-year limitations on their leadership. Democrats do not. Thus, Henry Hyde had to sacrifice his Judiciary Committee chairmanship, and J. Dennis Hastert will have to give up his speakership in 2007 while the Dems stay put.

Wisely, some Republicans in the U.S. House are discovering the folly of placing restrictions on electoral service. The incoming GOP whip, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri says that while ''the spirit'' of an eight-year term limit on House leadership posts ''is a good one,'' he will lead a drive to toss out the restrictions on leadership. Term limits is a device that distrusts the electorate and should never have had a place in conservative thinking.

Originally, dissatisfaction with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt led to the unwise constitutional amendment that limits a president to two terms. That is bosh. No one should prevent the electorate from determining how long a president should serve. Even if Roosevelt had lived to finish his fourth term, he would not have stood a chance for re-election to his fifth at age 66 in 1948. Ronald Reagan despised the two-term limit, but he would certainly not have been elected to a third, even if he tried, in 1988 at age 77.

The political process and the inexorable exigencies of time provide natural term limits. In the House, Illinois' Hastert, an outstanding speaker, should not be turned away in 2007 (although he has indicated he may not serve longer).

Just look at the speakers who left out of natural and political events. Tip O'Neill, a powerful speaker, voluntarily retired. His successor, Jim Wright, was forced to step down because of a fund-raising scandal. The Democrat who followed him, Tim Foley, was defeated in major part because he was too liberal for his district, winning re-nomination by a narrow margin (although initiating a lawsuit against term limits played into the hands of his opponents). Republican Newt Gingrich was forced out of his post.

It shows that term limits--even the voluntary ones--are not needed. Republicans should do away with the concept as entirely unneeded excessive limitation on constituent rights. And the very next in line for speaker is Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who has the makings of being a great one.

*****

When Trent Lott resigned as Senate majority leader, it led many liberals to excoriate the Southern legacy of racism and slavery. There's much hypocrisy in this, because slavery as an issue did not only center in the South.

Northern slave ships were launched from Marblehead, Mass., beginning in 1636, the year Harvard was founded. Those ships came equipped, the Washington Times points out, with thumbscrews and chains. Indeed, the first law legalizing slavery was passed, not in any Southern colony, but in supposedly ''enlightened'' Massachusetts in 1641 to contain that colony's captives seized in the Pequot Indian war. The Bay State also passed the first fugitive slave law, mandating the return of escaped slaves.

It would be interesting to have Sen. Edward Kennedy and Sen. John Kerry (a presidential aspirant) move to censure the leaders of their state who did nothing to disturb Massachusetts' record of slavery support. Nor did John F. Kennedy or his brother, Robert, ever mention their state's stake in the enslavement of blacks.

If we're stripping the stars and bars from state flags, let us by all means condemn slave-profiteering Massachusetts. I make the motion. Do I hear a second?

==> Ronald Reagan