The Health Crisis Defeated, but New Jersey is left with an economic crisis

In his April 21 op-ed, published in Spotlight NJ, Jack Ciattarelli aptly points out that after the health crisis is defeated, New Jersey will be left with an economic crisis unless a non-partisan approach to rebuilding the New Jersey state economy is adopted. The status quo proposal coming out of the Trenton goof troop – State Senate leader Sweeney and his super partisans, as well as failed Governor Phil Murphy, offer the already economically suffering residents of our state higher increased cost of living and greater unaffordability. This leads New Jersey residents to ask, why is there no non or bi-partisan commission to identify cuts to state spending when all across the state New Jerseyans are in danger of a depression? Why has none in Trenton proposed a pay cut for politicians and the politically connected when the regular Jane and Joe who support them are facing a potentially tough economic time? Why is the lessening of the tax burden on working and middle-class families not on the agenda for after the health crisis ends but before the financial one ramps up?

While New Jerseyans await the inevitable non-answer, the people must look at what Trenton is doing. When not proposing policies that will hurt New Jersey families, the Trenton goof troop and failed Governor Phil alternate between demanding to be given and begging for a federal bailout for decades of mismanagement. Regardless of the maturity (or lack thereof) of this methodology, the fact remains that state government spending in New Jersey was unsustainable prior to the public health crisis and the subsequent freezing of the economy. Unchanged, the policy of out of control spending will continue to result in an increased cost of living and rising unaffordability for New Jersey residents across the board. The “just say no” to all reform policy had the state economy limping to catchup with the rest of the country before the health crisis and lockdown, with the statewide quasi-quarantine shuttering most economic activity, it will be a death sentence. 

Though the hardest hit has been the working and lower middle class, the vast majority of the middle class is also worried about economic stability. And rightly so, as companies that have yet managed to keep employees working from home have seen a drop in the per capita work load. The tens of thousands of middle class New Jerseyans currently working from home in sales, support, costumer relations, programming, and middle and upper management positions have been to a certain extent immune to the earlier layoffs but will not remain so if the demand for the services of their employers continue to shrink. Millions of New Jerseyans are or may soon face a failed state unemployment insurance system that cannot handle the current claims, a Trenton goof troop that refused to temporarily move quarterly property tax payments, and a governor that is fighting to maintain his power structure rather than fighting for the people of New Jersey.

As Ciattarelli point out in his op-ed, if we are to save New Jersey from the coming economic crisis after the health crisis, we start by “fixing New Jersey’s worst-in-the-nation property taxes and business climate. Indeed, our past failures to address these two issues places us in an unnecessarily poorer and more difficult position to address the current economic situation. And so, fixing both would greatly improve New Jersey’s chances of experiencing a complete recovery and, subsequently, a more durable and robust state economy.”

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