Chris Christie RAISES Taxes

RED ALERT, RED ALERT, somone call up Grover Norquist right away! We have a mega emergency on our hands! Christie makes practical choice on tax increase The line-in-the-sand, no-new-taxes standard has fallen. Gov. Chris Christie, late last week, raised taxes -- on businesses, yet. That's right. New Jersey employers will pay on average $100 more per worker during the next year as part of a plan to... [more]

RED ALERT, RED ALERT, somone call up Grover Norquist right away! We have a mega emergency on our hands! Christie makes practical choice on tax increase The line-in-the-sand, no-new-taxes standard has fallen. Gov. Chris Christie, late last week, raised taxes -- on businesses, yet. That's right. New Jersey employers will pay on average $100 more per worker during the next year as part of a plan to make the state's unemployment trust fund financially viable. The state's unemployment trust fund has been drained by irresponsible lawmakers. For more than a decade, the state diverted $4.6 billion for other programs, leaving it unable to cover workers' unemployment claims if the economy ever turned south. The economy went south. The unemployment rate soared from 4.5 percent in December 2007 to 9.8 percent in January 2010. In fiscal 2010, the fund collected $2.2 billion and paid out $3.4 billion to 564,000 workers. To shore up the program, voters last November wisely approved a referendum preventing lawmakers from using money from the unemployment trust fund for anything but unemployment benefits. The new law avoided cutting benefits -- a move Christie has supported in the past. But with 377,432 workers collecting unemployment benefits as of Thursday, that might well have been political suicide. The Legislature, following one of Christie's task force recommendations, decided to spread the tax hike over three years instead of one. So Christie approved a little tax hike instead of a bigger one. Still, the state likely will need to continue borrowing from the federal government. But lawmakers said this represented the most responsible way to bolster the trust fund. http://www.thedailyjournal.com/article/20110707/OPINION01/107070333 [less]