Op-Ed: New Jersey can't afford to make cuts to services that help working families

The Daily Journal

That's the wrong choice for New Jersey. Too many of the more than $4 billion in budget cuts impair critical services that help working families make do in an economic downturn, such as after-school programs that let parents keep their jobs and training programs that help residents get good jobs.

Yet these legislators want to make even more shortsighted cuts. What services do these legislators think we have too much of? Is our air and water too clean? Are our roads too safe? Are our children's class sizes too small? The real risk we face is under-investing in areas that make New Jersey a great place to live and do business.

There is no doubt that this recession forces us to make tough choices. But the good news is that the fair and compassionate approach to addressing our budget crisis is also the most fiscally responsible approach. Rather than relying solely on shortsighted cuts to balance the budget, experts agree that the better choice is to ask a little more of those who can most afford it.

In a recession it is crucial to raise the overall level of spending by families, businesses and the government to keep people working and making purchases that spur investment. Wealthy residents spend only a fraction of their income, but almost every dollar of government spending on programs for the needy and salaries of public servants enter the local economy right away. This was the reasoning of more than 40 top economists and public policy experts, such as Henry Coleman of Rutgers and Douglas Massey of Princeton, who wrote to Gov. Jon S. Corzine last month and urged him to use fair, targeted revenue increases rather than make shortsighted budget cuts to services that lower and middle-income residents rely on.

The current budget bill takes a number of steps to share more of the burden of the recession with the wealthiest. We commend the legislature for adopting many of the revenue options that we proposed last year, in particular the revenue increases aimed at wealthy residents making more than $400,000.

But more needs to be done to avoid damaging cuts to programs that help working families. That is why the Better Choices Budget Campaign, endorsed by 42 community, environmental, labor, religious and other organizations, is calling on legislators in Trenton to pass fair, sensible, and environmentally sound revenue measures. 

Asking two cents on the dollar more of those making more than $300,000 per year, raising the surcharge on the corporate tax, and increasing registration fees for gas guzzling SUVs would generate more than $240 million in funding and avoid cuts that are bad for working families and bad for New Jersey.

Eva Bonime is Executive Director of the New Jersey Working Families Alliance and the coordinator of the Better Choices Budget Campaign.

Originally available at: http://www.thedailyjournal.com/article/20090625/OPINION02/906250324