With his bid for governor in full swing, State Sen. Kirk Dillard (R-Hinsdale) appeared on Fox Chicago Sunday yesterday to talk about the state budget crisis. Not surprisingly, he tried to oversimplify our structural deficit by attributing this year's $9.2 billion shortfall to "out-of-control spending." The notion that Illinois is on a spending spree has been debunked before. But what caught our ear was Dillard's revisionist history. The full video is below (skip ahead to the 4:00 mark for the relevant portion):

DILLARD: [W]hen I was Jim Edgar's chief of staff, we inherited a mountain of debt then. We eliminated it. We left $1 billion in the state treasury and we doubled the rate of inflation, new money for schools, without a tax increase. And it ought to be able to be done now.

"Without a tax increase," huh? The reality is that Edgar's first term as governor began with him backing two separate efforts -- in 1991 and again in 1993 -- to permanently raise the income tax rate to the current levels of 3 percent for individuals and 4.8 percent for corporations.  Granted, he also pushed through a lot of cuts in those first few years.  But you can't isolate the surplus left at the end of his tenure from the revenue enhancements passed at the beginning.  Nor can you forget that Edgar had the good fortune of governing this state amid a growing economy.  Pat Quinn would surely trade places with him if given the chance.

Another reason Dillard's anti-tax rhetoric falls flat: He himself voiced support for an even higher income tax rate after entering the Senate. From a column by the Sun-Times' Steve Neal published March 21, 1994:

The Illinois tax system isn't fair. Illinois is among only eight states with a flat income-tax rate. Illinois residents are paying the lowest income tax but the highest property taxes in the Midwest. State Sen. Kirk Dillard (R-Hinsdale), Edgar's former chief of staff, has said that he could support an increase in the income tax for education if it's linked to property- tax relief.

Finally, if Dillard is going to rewrite Edgar's record to bolster his own political ambitions, he should at least be forced to acknowledge what his former boss says about the current budget crisis: That a tax increase is inevitable.  From a Daily Herald blog post in May (emphasis added):

Edgar said there was likely no way out without a tax increase but that it had to be paired with unpopular budget cuts.

"If you raise taxes before you get other expenditures under control, you will never get them under control," said Edgar.

A few other notable remarks from Dillard's appearance: He declared "ethics" a "Republican principle" and pitched himself as a good choice for governor because he would be able to work well with House Speaker Michael Madigan.