Better Choices Budget Campaign Principles

The proposed state budget takes New Jersey in the wrong direction, cutting vital services and jeopardizing our future. These cuts might seem to help balance the budget in the short term, but they will weaken our communities, continue the relentless increase in property taxes, undermine the future for our families, and hurt our children, our seniors and our most vulnerable residents.

Governor Corzine has encouraged people to come forward with alternatives to the proposed budget. Alternatives are desperately needed, because the proposed budget will make it impossible to provide the good education, health care, and basic services our families expect and deserve. There are better choices that meet New Jersey’s needs and invest in New Jersey’s future.

The Better Choices Budget Campaign is based on these principles:

• We need long-term solutions to New Jersey’s fiscal problems, not short-sighted cuts that will make them worse. 

• Today’s fiscal crisis is the result of years of irresponsible and short-sighted decisions. Blaming New Jersey’s fiscal problems on overspending is misleading. We have reached this point because rather than raising revenue to meet New Jersey’s needs, politicians engaged in years of Enron-style accounting, irresponsible income tax cuts, cost-shifting to local governments and excessive borrowing. Our current revenue system relies too heavily on local property taxes, takes too much from working families and fails to generate enough income to provide essential services and invest in our children’s future.

• Far from spending too much, we invest way too little in our residents and their future. We keep hearing politicians say New Jersey spends too much. The truth is, we have crying needs that must be met to maintain the quality of life New Jerseyans expect and deserve—and to make this a state of opportunity for all. We need millions more to spend on crumbling bridges and highways; to modernize schools and colleges and keep classes small and high-quality education accessible to all; to preserve open space; for safe, affordable housing and revitalized cities; to upgrade mass transit; and to provide quality, affordable health care for all New Jerseyans.  These are the investments essential for a strong state and a sound future.

• We can afford to begin taking care of these problems. New Jersey has the highest percentage of millionaires of all fifty states. We’re second in median household income. And yet we drastically underfund our state. While local property taxes are untenably high as a result of cost-shifting to local governments, New Jersey ranks 36^th in state government tax revenue as percentage of income. We can make better choices that protect and strengthen New Jersey.

• We can address our fiscal crisis and ensure a better future by asking a little more of those who can afford it—and by making better choices. First and foremost, New Jersey needs a state and local revenue system that is adequate to protect services and invest in our future. The revenue burden must be shared broadly and fairly, based on ability to pay. In addition, we can save millions and make our neighborhoods safer by updating ineffective practices in the criminal justice system; by negotiating lower drug prices for our health care programs; by ending tax breaks and subsidies to corporations that still lay people off or leave New Jersey when some other place gives them a higher offer. We can make better choices. We can’t afford not to.