NJPP’s outgoing president, Gordon MacInnes, sat down with Steve Adubato to discuss tax fairness, good governance, and his 55-plus year career in the public interest.
Gordon, a former state senator and assemblyman, joined NJPP in 2012 and ushered in a era of growth for the organization. During Gordon’s six-plus year tenure, NJPP quadrupled its revenues, more than doubled its staff, and expanded its expertise on immigration and health care policies. NJPP continues to be a trusted source of innovative, evidence-based policy proposals that advance economic and social justice for all New Jerseyans.
As Gordon explains to Steve, NJPP is a think-and-do tank: “We put out reports; they’re footnoted; they have graphics; but we’re there because we’re trying to influence what happens in New Jersey, particularly when it comes to policy making.”
According to a new poll, a majority of New Jersey voters believe the state’s wealthiest individuals and corporations do not pay their fair share in taxes.
NJPP president Gordon MacInnes appeared on NJTV to discuss the poll results and what they mean for state legislators as they consider Governor Murphy’s fiscal year 2019 budget.
While taxes are generally unpopular, there is broad support for proposals that promote fairness in the tax code and would allow New Jersey to reinvest in critical assets like public education and transit infrastructure. A majority of New Jersey voters support a millionaires tax, reimplementation of the estate tax, and a surcharge on corporations with earnings greater than $1 million per year.
Attendees at Impact 2017 – the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ State Policy Conference – drew inspiration from ImpacTalks by State Priorities Partnership staff members about what drives their commitment to advancing equity and shared prosperity.
In this ImpacTalk, NJPP Vice President Jon Whiten shares the story of his organization’s pivotal role in the fight to defend the Affordable Care Act – and what that fight meant to millions of Americans, including someone close to Jon’s heart.
New Jersey Policy Perspective joined forces yesterday with Americans for Prosperity-New Jersey to oppose the state’s main bid for Amazon’s new headquarters: a bid for the city of Newark fueled by an estimated $7 billion in tax breaks. NJPP and AFP-NJ were joined by Assembly Deputy Speaker John Wisniewski and the American Legislative Exchange Council, making for a case of strange bedfellows in the State House.
“The groups convening today’s press conference don’t agree on much when it comes to tax and economic policy,” NJPP Vice President Jon Whiten said, “but we are in absolute agreement that offering $7 billion in tax breaks to a single corporation is terrible policy and a big step in the wrong direction.”
New Jersey Policy Perspective policy analyst Brandon McKoy joined NJTV News’ Michael Aron last week to explain how New Jersey’s investment in public higher education has faded after the Great Recession.
The news segment coincided with a new 50-state report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which found that the funding decline nationwide has contributed to higher tuition and reduced quality as colleges have had to balance budgets by reducing faculty, limiting course offerings and in some cases, closing campuses.
McKoy told NJTV that the study found New Jersey certainly wasn’t alone in cutting back on higher education, and that the Garden State has in fact started to increase funding again – although very, very slightly.
“I think this is one of those news stories that is good just because we’ve stopped cutting, but it’s not where we need to be,” he said.
“For years, Republicans railed against the Affordable Care Act and pledged they would repeal and replace it with something better. But under the plan they put out last week, the only people who are better off are millionaires and health insurance company executives,” said Sen. Menendez. “Page by page, this Republican plan forces Americans to pay more for less comprehensive health care coverage. It eviscerates Medicaid, leaving over half a million low-income New Jerseyans with no options, and abandoning vulnerable children and pregnant women, families living paycheck to paycheck, and seniors with long-term care needs.”
“This week, the independent CBO shattered any illusion that the Senate Republican health repeal bill is any less cruel and craven than the version passed by the House,” said Sen. Booker. “As NJPP clearly points out, under the Senate Republican plan more than 500,000 New Jerseyans will be left without coverage, with our state losing $22 billion in federal funding over seven years. This repeal plan doesn’t just target the vulnerable, the elderly and the poor. It targets all of us. It undermines our character as a country and our highest ideals.”
“We can’t lose sight of those in New Jersey who would be most affected by the BCRA and its radical changes to the Medicaid program, including one in every three children in our state, more than 205,000 people with disabilities and more than half of the state’s nursing home residents who rely on Medicaid,” said New Jersey Hospital Association President and CEO Betsy Ryan. “The Better Care Reconciliation Act is most definitely not better for New Jersey residents and their health.”
The Senators did their segment of the call together from D.C., and streamed it on Facebook Live.
NJTV News last night focused on the impact that President Trump’s proposed budget would have on New Jersey, and turned to New Jersey Policy Perspective Vice President Jon Whiten to help explain some of the human impact.
“The Trump budget is really a disaster for New Jersey and for residents across the state,” Whiten told Michael Aron. “It slashes assistance for health care 1.6 million New Jerseyans rely on. It slashes assistance for food and nutrition 900,000 New Jerseyans rely on. It completely eliminates assistance for home heating 800,000 New Jerseyans rely on, and really the list goes on, and on, and on and on.”
New Jersey Policy Perspective Vice President Jon Whiten yesterday joined Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto and partners from New Jersey Citizen Action, the AFL-CIO, AARP of New Jersey, the Main Street Alliance and others to push New Jersey to adopt sensible improvements to the state’s trailblazing paid family leave program – and NJTV was there to file this report.
As NJPP’s in-depth analysis released last month found, paid leave is a huge asset to the state of New Jersey – helping its workers, families, businesses and economy – yet it is woefully underutilized. The chief reasons are terribly inadequate wage replacements for leave-takers, and a lack of job-protected leave for 1 in 3 New Jersey workers.
“For low-income working families, who already struggle to get by in high-cost New Jersey, losing a third of your take home pay is often out of the question,” Whiten explained of the weak wage replacements. “Meanwhile, an artificially low cap on wage replacements of $633 a week means that middle-class workers are faced with the prospect of losing more than a third of their wages, an unrealistic proposition for the many middle-class families who essentially live paycheck to paycheck in our state.”
This week NJPP Vice President Jon Whiten was invited to join Senate President Sweeney, Senator Diegnan and fellow advocates from the AFL-CIO, AARP, American Cancer Society, New Jersey Citizen Action and the Rutgers University Center for Women and Work to discuss ways to make New Jersey’s paid family leave program work better for the state’s families and businesses.
“Family leave insurance can be a lifeline for working families and their loved ones,” Whiten said. “New Jersey’s experience demonstrates that paid family leave is good for workers, their families and the business community – but it could be even better, and the program even more effective, if we made some common-sense improvements.”
Last Thursday, NJPP Vice President Jon Whiten took part in a community forum hosted by NJTV about economic development in Camden, where he questioned if the recent surge in tax breaks for big corporations will really have a lasting impact on the city’s residents and small businesses.
“Seventy-one percent of those jobs already exist either in the Camden suburbs or in Philadelphia and are already filled by people who are just going to continue to fill them here in Camden,” he said. “So that’s a big problem. It’s great to have jobs in a city, but it’s even better to have people in the city having jobs.”
