Today, the New Jersey Legislature released its budget proposal for Fiscal Year (FY) 2024. The $54.3 billion budget was made available to legislators after 11:00 PM and was quickly advanced out of the Senate and Assembly Budget Committees without publicly available bill text or an opportunity for anyone to testify. In response to the budget deal, New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP) releases the following statement.
Nicole Rodriguez, President, NJPP:
“This budget should have been an opportunity to make generational investments in schools, transit, affordable housing, and so much more, but lawmakers prioritized big tax cuts for the wealthy and well-connected instead. With so many families struggling to keep up with rising costs, this budget gifts a $1 billion tax cut to multinational corporations, creates new tax loopholes, and hands hundreds of millions of dollars to Hollywood studios and big developers. The promise of “affordability” for working families has taken a backseat to the interests of the wealthy and powerful.”
“Make no mistake, there’s a lot to celebrate in this budget, but it will be incredibly difficult to maintain adequate funding for the pension, public schools, the Child Tax Credit, and countless other public goods with less tax revenue. We’re already seeing tax collections coming in lower than expected, and with federal pandemic aid about to expire, New Jersey will soon face a fiscal cliff that we aren’t prepared for.”
