New Jersey Senate Republican Whip Kevin O’Toole of Cedar Grove wonders if Governor Jon Corzine has ever totaled the cost of the burdens he has loaded onto the backs of New Jersey’s middle class during his three years in office.
“This year, Governor Corzine wants to raise taxes by more than $420 million by eliminating the middle class tax deduction for property taxes. He wants to raise the costs of owning a car or boat or motorcycle by as much as $60 million by raising fees charged by the Department of Motor Vehicles. He plans to raise sales taxes on some products by $40 million.
“Last year, he raised tolls on the most popular highways in the state, making it more expensive for middle class residents to get work each day and for small businesses to create jobs. He drastically cut property tax rebates in 2008, and he wants to cut them even more this year in a state where average homeowner pays $7,045 in property taxes, the highest rate in the nation and the highest rate this state has ever seen. All this during the term of a governor who ran on the promise of lowering property taxes.
“In his budget message yesterday, he called for a nearly $400 million increase in payroll taxes, a move that will drive away even more middle class jobs at a time when New Jersey’s unemployment rate is higher than every neighboring state’s. It’s now 7.6 percent while the rate was 7 percent in New York and Pennsylvania and 6.7 percent in Delaware. Unemployment in New Jersey was 5.8 percent when Jon Corzine took office.
“This governor’s legacy will be an unprecedented impact it will have on lowering the quality of life for middle class New Jersey. Higher taxes. Fewer jobs. Diminishing opportunity, and an increasingly unaffordable cost of living. Governor Corzine has abandoned the middle class taxpayer.”
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