1 in 6 New Jerseyans hit By Governor’s vetoes
July 11th, 2011 | by Raymond J Castro | Published in NJPP Blog: As a Matter of Fact ... | 3 Comments
By Raymond J. Castro, Senior Policy Analyst
One in six New Jerseyans will be adversely affected by line-item vetoes of two critical programs in the budget Governor Christie signed last week.
Today, the state Senate is expected to vote on restoring funding for those programs – the state Earned Income Tax Credit and NJ Family Care. Doing so, however, will require bipartisan support in order to achieve two-thirds majority.
The governor’s vetoes represented unprecedented cutbacks in state services and will affect more than 1.5 million residents, mostly low-income working families with children. Without these supports many parents will be unable to continue to work in low and moderate wage jobs that support their children in a state with one of the highest costs of living in the nation.
Last week the Legislature passed a state budget that fully funded these program. However the governor in New Jersey has considerably more power than governors in many states and has the discretion to delete any funds proposed for specific programs – or any “line item” in the budget. The only way that those funds can be restored is for the Legislature to vote to overturn each veto with a two-thirds vote.
When voting on each line-item, it will be important that legislators know what the impact is on people in their districts. New Jersey Policy Perspective has created an analysis to show the number of people, county by county, who will be affected by these two line item vetos, which were among dozens of vetoes by the governor.
Budgets reflect a state’s priorities. The public does not always know where individual legislators stand on those priorities because the budget is usually voted on in its entirety. That will all change today, and we hope that each lawmaker, regardless of party, recognizes just how devastating these cuts can be to wide numbers of New Jerseyans.
July 11th, 2011at 8:23 AM(#)
“Without these supports many parents will be unable to continue to work in low and moderate wage jobs that support their children in a state with one of the highest costs of living in the nation.”
Your quote is not clear to me, at least. Will they be fired, just quit, have to move, get a higher pay job? How? They would have already done one of these?
What is a better action than continuing to work, regardless of veto? Does complete welfare dependence ‘pay more’?
If welfare is better than working, the veto should be overridden, and the welfare system given a second look.
July 11th, 2011at 4:13 PM(#)
Mr Castro, if you want to talk percentages where you note 1 in 6 are affected by the vetoes, i hope you are fully aware that 6 in 6 are affected by the budget itself.
Simply put you are another NJPP knucklehead like forsberg that has no concept of finances, free markets, capitalism and taxes. You just want to bleed your hearts all over the internet without thinking things through and being objective. I cannot argue that yes there are factions of people in need and as a govt, the govt should be the final fallback for help when all else fails.
You are perfectly right to note the budget is supposed to reflect priorities. But geez, $30 billion worth of priorities!!! Where do you think this money is coming from? Answer-The taxpayers- shouldnt they be the #1 priority? (of course the true answer is not only the taxpayers, but corporate taxes, fees and grants but most is from taxpyers!)
Like I asked forsberg in an email the other week, do liberals think things through or do they just demand more and more programs and leave the costs and the administration details for others to figure out. I would really like to know that answer. Everytime some blogger posts something on this NJPP, the result is of course putting another huge burden on all of us paying the taxes. nThat is why we are the highest taxes state populace(or ever so close if you go by your NJPP numbers, so no big difference.)
Constructive suggestion: Why don’t you and forsberg and the rest of the NJPP talking heads get a movement together where the people that want more programs and to pay more taxes can happily pool the money and send it to Trenton. Theres where you can put your intellectual efforts and resources toward helping out the state and that includes everyone such as the taxpayers, not just bleeding for a downtrodden faction here or a beleaguered faction there. As a followthrouhg, that would give you a good metric as to where you stand when you hear the responses to your queries to people that “hey, we would like you to donate some money to us to send to trenton for their budget”. (Go door to doot, thats best. First try the rich areas, then the middleclass areas, and the poor areas. Probably the poorer areas you would get a response as a guess, but not much money unfortunately.)
At least one thing I am glad to see is that NJPP corraled all the liberal knuckleheads in just one place so they don’t cause too much damage, as if they were disseminated though out the public domain like appleseeds. Like I told forsberg, you don’t have to respond, except just answer that question i had asked above in the third paragraph. Thanks, Bruce
July 12th, 2011at 5:30 PM(#)
Skip3house,
The concern is that some parents will quit and go on welfare because while welfare pays less than a miniumum wage job, it will provide health coverage for the parent. A parent earning $15,000 a year and raising two childen obviously cannot afford to pay $5,000-$7,000 a year for his or her health insurance. When you add on child care costs and other expenses it is not possible to support a family in NJ at that wage level without help. The answer is not to reduce the welfare grant levels which are only a third of the poverty level now ($424 a month for a three person family) but make work pay by providing supports like health insurance based on a sliding scale fee to poor working parents. That policy has resulted in cutting the welfare rolls by more than half.
Bruce,
In answer to your question regarding whether we think through our comments, NJPP blogs and reports are carefully researched and are based on verifiable facts. If you are interested in a more in-depth analysis of the issues, please click on “reports” at the top of our website.