the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, Senate Republican Leader Steven Oroho called for the Murphy administration to dedicate pandemic relief funds to the Unemployment Insurance (UI) Fund to prevent $1 billion of cumulative payroll tax increases on New Jersey employers.
“Today’s budget committee meeting with the Department of Labor confirmed that New Jersey employers will be hit with a massive $700 million payroll tax increase on July 1 to help replenish the UI Fund,” said Oroho (R-24), a member of the Senate Budget & Appropriations Committee. “That increase follows a $300 million increase that took effect less than a year ago and would push the total payroll tax increase borne by employers to well over $1 billion. There is absolutely no reason the Murphy administration can’t dedicate or repurpose some of the unspent $5 billion of pandemic relief funds at its disposal to prevent this looming and unnecessary tax increase.”
Dozens of other states have used the federal pandemic relief funds they received to prevent replenish their unemployment funds in the wake of massive payouts resulting from pandemic-related unemployment.
In 2021, Senate Republicans proposed using $2.5 billion of the more than $6 billion New Jersey received through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP) for this purpose.
According to a recent report by the State Auditor, just $1 billion of the state’s ARP funds have been spent to date.
Oroho warned there is a very real risk that the Biden administration could reclaim unspent pandemic relief funds from states as part of an agreement to raise the federal debt limit.
“The longer the Murphy administration sits on unspent pandemic relief funds, the greater the risk those funds will be clawed back by the federal government,” added Oroho. “It would be fiscally irresponsible for the Murphy administration to not take action to protect these funds by dedicating them quickly to continuing needs like our unemployment fund.”
new jersey is a total anti business state
NJ is an ant-taxpayer state
NJ is an anti-American state
keep chasing businesses out of state
Murphy resembles the Rat he is!
Big time business man worth $250m is such a egomaniac and control freak, he can’t seem to do right by NJ businesses looking to survive after getting crushed by the pandemic.
This is the result of a one-party rule state
A limousine liberal from Goldman Sachs can always buy the Democratic nomination and count on the majority of Democrat Senators and Assemblymen to vote with him.
These Dems are from shit-hole cities and can’t balance their own checkbooks, so how can you expect them to manage a state budget.
Murphy bought his job just as corzine did.
How can you trust someone from wall street
But they sprinkle their money around and buy votes.
disgraceful