{"id":569360,"date":"2010-05-18T16:46:46","date_gmt":"2010-05-18T20:46:46","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8341c60fd53ef013481136e02970c"},"modified":"2010-05-18T16:46:46","modified_gmt":"2010-05-18T20:46:46","slug":"business-groups-backs-kirk-for-senate-over-giannoulias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/569360","title":{"rendered":"Business groups backs Kirk for Senate over Giannoulias"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Posted by John Chase<\/em> at 3:46 p.m.<\/p>\n<p>While it wasn\u2019t a surprise, the Illinois Chamber of Commerce today endorsed Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk, saying the North Shore congressman has a depth of experience and history of bipartisanship to help create more jobs throughout the state.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>The endorsement doesn\u2019t come with any money, but Kirk said he the support shows business leaders back his economic philosophy of being more fiscally conservative. The business group has long endorsed GOP candidates for various offices, though Kirk noted it did endorse Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin in 2002.\n<\/p>\n<p>Calvin Butler, chairman of the chamber\u2019s board of directors, said Kirk\u2019s proposed \u201cSmall Business Bill of Rights\u201d is a major reason for the endorsement over Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias. Kirk\u2019s plan calls for exempting small businesses from capital gains tax for a decade and slashing government paperwork. <br \/><\/br><\/p>\n<p><\/br>\u201cHe also cares about small business and is committed to policies that create jobs and promote economic growth,\u201d Butler said.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>The endorsement served to highlight numerous economic policy differences between Kirk and Giannoulias. Kirk endorses keeping President Bush\u2019s tax cuts in place and opposed President Obama\u2019s $787 million economic stimulus bill. Giannoulias supported the stimulus bill and opposes extending all of Bush&#8217;s tax cuts.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>Giannoulias\u2019 campaign said Kirk\u2019s votes in Congress have cost the state and the nation jobs.<\/p>\n<p> Kirk said he opposed the stimulus plan because he felt that the bills endorsed spending money the nation doesn\u2019t have. \u201cThat\u2019s why, I think, we need a more fiscally conservative policy in Washington,\u201d Kirk said.<br \/><\/br><br \/><\/br>In making the endorsement, the chamber received a questionnaire from Giannoulias\u2019 campaign but the Democrat did not participate in an interview with the full chamber board of directors. Kirk did do the interview, Chamber President Doug Whitley said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted by John Chase at 3:46 p.m. While it wasn\u2019t a surprise, the Illinois Chamber of Commerce today endorsed Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk, saying the North Shore congressman has a depth of experience and history of bipartisanship to help create more jobs throughout the state.The endorsement doesn\u2019t come with any money, but Kirk said [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3992,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-569360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3992"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}