Congress moved quickly this week to approve a bill designed to ease supply chain shortages for semiconductors, by supporting incentives for domestic chip manufacturing. But a new spending bill — addressing climate change, health care and inflation — is on a bumpier path. The bill does not include a proposal to raise or eliminate the cap on state and local tax deductions, or SALT.
That’s something members of the New Jersey delegation have been pushing for and will need to consider as they decide which way to vote. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and U.S. Rep. Josh Gottheimer haven’t taken a public position just yet on the bill, which does include tax credits for buyers of electric vehicles and comes on the heels of Gov. Phil Murphy announcing cash incentives for EV purchases in New Jersey.
Brookdale Community College will be adding training in electric vehicle technology to its curriculum. “There aren’t very many higher ed institutions that even offer automotive technology, and there’s an even fewer number that offer training in EVs,” said Dr. James Crowder, dean of Brookdale’s STEM Institute. “So of course our immediate thought was, well, who’s going to train the people that are going to be needed to maintain and repair all these vehicles?”
New Jersey Sens. Bob Menendez and Cory Booker this week joined 98 other members of Congress asking President Biden to extend the moratorium on federal student loan payments, which is set to expire at the end of next month. Meantime the president has been considering student loan debt relief of $10,000 per borrower. Politico reports that documents from the U.S. Department of Education detail a plan to provide that relief to millions of student borrowers, if the president OKs it.
