As he makes his rounds on the gubernatorial campaign trail, State Sen. Kirk Dillard (R-Hinsdale) loves to tout his "executive experience" as former Gov. Jim Edgar's chief of staff. And there's no accomplishment he loves to brag about more than his experience helping the former governor turn "a mountain of debt" into budget surplus -- all without a tax increase.  On WVON's Matt and Perry Show this morning, Dillard repeated the claim. Listen:

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DILLARD: Gov. Edgar and I inherited a mountain of debt. We eliminated that debt, we doubled the rate of inflation and new investment in our public schools. We were able -- and I know that Perry's very interested about health care, which we talked [during] the Todd Stroger segment earlier. But in the Edgar administration, we found ways -- and innovative ways -- to get record amounts of health care money to Roseland Hospital, to Mt. Sinai, to Cook County Hospital, although we preferred Roseland or Mt. Sinai. And when the Edgar administration closed down, we had a $1.5 billion budget surplus -- all without an income tax increase. [Emphasis added]

What this narrative conveniently omits is that, while Edgar did "inherit" a large amount of debt, he also inherited new revenue in the form of the temporary income tax increase that had been passed two years earlier.  Moreover, he ultimately made that tax hike permanent.  Granted, the Edgar administration also did a fair amount of cutting during his tenure.  But without that revenue boost, creating the surplus simply wouldn't have been impossible.

Let's walk through the timeline again:

In 1989, Gov. Jim Thompson, Edgar's predecessor, approved a measure that temporarily raised the personal income tax rate from 2.5 percent to 3 percent and the corporate income tax from 4 percent to 4.8 percent in 1989.

In January 1991, Edgar took office.

On July 1, 1991, Thompson's temporary increase expired.

On July 26, 1991, Edgar signed into law what the Sun-Times reported at the time as "the first permanent increase in income tax rates since the tax was enacted in 1969."  Rather than adopt Thomson's full increase, he bumped the personal rate up to just 2.75 percent and the corporate rate to 4.4 percent.

But in 1993, Edgar realized that those rates were too low and made Thompson's entire hike permanent (PDF). Those rates -- 3 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively -- still stand today.

The bottom line is that it's not overspending that has pushed Illinois into a financial crisis. It's unwillingness to accept that the state's tax structure is outdated and fails to generate enough money to meet its lawful obligations. Dillard is simply misleading the public to suggest otherwise.