Lawmakers in Illinois, where major employers are threatening to leave the state if their tax burden isn't reduced, return to Springfield today to consider what they can't afford to do.

They can bow to pressure from businesses, cut their tax load and deepen the state's $8 billion budget hole by an additional $325 million. Or they can run the risk that CME Group Inc., operator of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, and Sears Holdings Corp., parent of Sears and Kmart, will flee the state.

Giving in is "a lousy policy, and it opens the door to the next business and the next business and the next business," said Kent Redfield, a University of Illinois at Springfield political scientist, said in a telephone interview. "It makes good political sense but it's not sound financial policy."

Eleven months after passing record income-tax increases that halved a $13 billion budget deficit, the Democrat-dominated Legislature is dealing with the blowback.

Lawmakers -- with no Republican votes -- approved $7 billion in personal and corporate income-tax increases in January. That provoked objections from businesses such as Caterpillar Inc. and Deere & Co., and poaching expeditions from governors seeking to lure unhappy Illinois employers. Sears and the Chicago exchanges said during the third quarter that they might leave without relief.