The Op-Ed below recently appeared in the Asbury Park Press. It was written on behalf of the Latino Action
Network by LAN Policy Committee Chair, Daniel Santo Pietro. Daniel will be speaking on this topic as a panelist
at a Budget Forum on Thursday, June 14th at 6 PM at CWA Local 1032, 67 Scotch Road in Ewing, New Jersey.
The budget forum entitled “How Christie’s
Budget Threatens New Jersey’s Future: And How Working Families Are Paying the
Price” is being hosted by the Latino Action Network, the New Jersey Working
Families Alliance and CWA Local 1032. For more information, please contact Omar
Perez at 201-448-7832 or Omar@NJWorkingFamilies.org.
SANTO PIETRO: Nothing fair about state budget: Working class victimized by Christie's misguided policies
Asbury Park
Press Op-Ed - 5:50 PM, Jun 7, 2012
The Latino Action Network has watched Gov. Christie’s approach to “fairness”
with great concern for the last three years. We get a queasy feeling in our
stomachs whenever Christie mentions fairness because we know that is bad news
for the most vulnerable in our society.
His definition of fairness always hurts the working poor the most. Latinos
are spread over the economic spectrum, but most are modest working families who
ask nothing more than fairness from their governmental leaders.
The centerpiece of the governor’s latest “fair” budget is a 10 percent
across-the-board income tax cut. Most of the benefits go to those who earn more
than $400,000, the very people who most in
New Jersey think need to pay more to have a
better society. But Christie can never be fair enough when it comes to the
wealthy.
During the budget process, we hear about a compromise with Senate President
Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, another overrated friend of the poor, that
leaves most of the savings for the wealthy in place and proposes to restore a
state Earned Income Tax Credit and deliver some property tax relief. The
compromise fell apart recently when the latest state revenue figures fell short
of projections and raised questions about whether we can afford a broad tax
cut.
Even before the budget projection debacle, Christie found another way to
hurt the poor by cutting state aid to the poorest school districts. School
funding is one of the most contentious issues because the state Supreme Court
has forced successive governors to find more money for the poorer districts.
Christie thinks he has found a way around fairness in our school aid formula
by changing the school funding formula through budget language. The language
changes the weights that determine how much aid each district should receive.
The governor wants to lower the relative weight given to children who live in
poverty, and those who need help to learn English. Many school districts who
have large numbers of these children will receive millions less and districts
with higher enrollments will receive more no matter the needs of their children.
Since many of these children are Hispanic, the Latino Action Network demands
that this language be removed from the budget and we follow the school funding
formula that is already law.
Last month, in lockstep with the national Republican Party’s blind
opposition to health care reforms that move us toward universal coverage — the
most important pillar of social fairness — the governor vetoed the creation of
a Health Care Exchange.
The legislation, in line with national health care reform, was intended to
create a competitive marketplace for health insurance plans by 2014. The
exchange would have channeled millions in federal subsidies to 800,000 people
in New Jersey who work, own small businesses and hold down more than one job to
survive, but cannot afford health care coverage.
The governor has the audacity to say we should do nothing until the U.S.
Supreme Court renders its decision because it may cost the taxpayer some
unnecessary expense. In fact, the federal government has funded nearly all the
start-up costs of the proposed health care exchanges. Fifteen states have
already put exchanges in place.
Finally, of particular importance to Hispanics is Christie’s history of
cutting modest programs that focused on the needs of working-class Hispanics.
Hearing him say that now that the economy is improving, we can help those who
sacrificed during the bad years, again makes us queasy. His plan is to reward
high-end earners with a generous tax cut while denying working families any
restoration of programs intended to help them cope with the poor economy.
In the past two years, Christie has thrown 13,000 legal immigrants off
FamilyCare, dismantled Hispanic Women Resource Centers, slashed Division of
Youth and Family Services cooperative programs with community organizations,
gutted the Center for Hispanic Policy and Research Development, which funded
many useful community programs, and denied staff support to the Commission on
New Americans. The total of these programs is less than 5 percent of the
proposed tax cuts.
It is not too late to return
New
Jersey toward fairness. A few courageous politicians
could turn the tide and end the unfair, unaffordable tax cuts, re-establish the
school funding formula, move ahead on the health exchange and still have enough
left over to restore programs to working families and pass a balanced budget.
Not only would Hispanics benefit, but all of
New Jersey wins when fairness rules.
