New Jersey lawmakers passed the Democrats’ alternative state budget, 53 to 24 in the Assembly and 31 to 6 in the Senate, approving a $38.7 billion spending plan that Gov. Phil Murphy has vowed to veto at least in part because it doesn’t include his proposed millionaire’s tax expansion and — he claims — relies on what he called “fuzzy voodoo math.” But top Democrats insist their budget is sound.
“We think when the governor really takes a look at budget he’s going to understand it’s a good, solid budget,” Senate President Steve Sweeney said. “We need to understand that we can’t just keep raising taxes without fixing the problem.”
“I believe we do have the revenue in this budget to support the spending. There are those who could question certain particular individual revenue items, but overall I do believe and feel comfortable that the revenue that’s projected in this budget that been supported by the Office of Legislative Services,” said Sen. Paul Sarlo, chair of the Budget and Appropriations Committee.
Murphy’s budget had counted on a $535 million revenue boost from enhancing the millionaire’s tax, plus another $57 million from other taxes, including surcharges on opioid makers, gun owners and corporations that don’t cover their workers’ health insurance. None of that made it into the Legislature’s budget. Murphy indicated in a letter to the Legislature that he would be forced to take what he called “corrective action,” inferring line-item vetoes. Some Democrats made a last-ditch plea for the millionaire’s tax, like Sen. Nia Gill of Montclair.
“That has a lot of millionaires, and not one millionaire called to say they are against the millionaire’s tax. What they have said […] we understand we must give more because we have more,” said Gill.
The Democrats’ budget actually includes many of the governor’s spending items. It adds money for NJ Transit, extraordinary special education and more. But it cut back on some of Murphy’s priorities, in particular reducing his funding increase to help make community colleges tuition free.
Meanwhile, Republicans argued it doesn’t cut enough and expressed alarm over baked-in pension deficits.
“We have the highest property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes and corporate taxes in the region. This budget does not address the serious structural problems that have caused series issues with our taxpayers. At some point, and it will be relatively soon, we are at a crash course with bankruptcy,” said Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick.
It’s all about timing now. The governor has 10 days to decide what to do. The budget deadline is June 30.
