Sweeney the Blameless

By Joe Sinagra | The Save Jersey Blog

Sweeney---Forrest-Gump---Save-JerseySo whose eyes is Sweeney trying to pull the wool over, Save Jerseyans?

Sweeney apparently had no problem with the economy under Florio and Corzine, but now he decides to blame Christie for stifling the creation of jobs. I would have thought after Barbara what’s-her-name’s loss, Sweeney might have seen the light, but he is still reading from the playbook of talking points.

Under Jon Corzine New Jersey lost 27,200 total jobs, including 3,800 construction jobs, as of December 2007. In the month of October 2008 alone, New Jersey lost 6,000 jobs. New Jersey’s unemployment rate was at 6 percent, the highest monthly statewide rate since July 2003. The national unemployment rate was at 6.5 percent, a 14-year high. All while Steve Sweeney and his party dominated Trenton.

New Jersey’s unemployment rate had increased from 9.2 percent to 9.3 percent, the highest in over 25 years.

New Jersey lost 115,700 private-sector jobs during Corzine’s last year in office.

Under Corzine, New Jersey’s state/local tax-burden percentage has gone from the third-highest in the country to the highest in the country. Unemployment increased by more than double from 4.8% to 9.7% during Jon Corzine’s single term in office.

His few newly created jobs didn’t even come close to paying the salaries and benefits of those jobs that had vanished.

As of August 2009, when Jon Corzine was Governor, more than 230,000 people already had left New Jersey since 2002. Property taxes, on average, had risen almost 55 percent statewide just from the prior seven years, and by 20 percent when Corzine took office.

Also, in August of 2009, Corzine had declared that New Jersey gained 13,000 jobs at private sector companies. The state’s numbers showed a decline of 7,100 public-sector jobs, 5,600 jobs short, of Corzine’s 13,000 job creation claims. Corzine also claimed to be holding a tough line on spending, even as the total number of public sector jobs went from 643,300 to 644,300. But alas, Steven Sweeney was fine with that, and went along with the factious job numbers.

Under Corzine, taxes increased for the citizens of New Jersey by over $10 billion dollars in the face of a deteriorating economy.

Both 1990 and 1991 were record tax increase years for New Jersey; expenditures surged with no reduction in spending. In 1991, state spending rose by 10 percent and in 1992 it grew by 12 percent. In 1992 alone, spending rose 26.0 percent in New Jersey.

Florio pledged to skip takes hikes but nevertheless shoved and ram-rodded through the legislature a “bilk the rich” $2.8-billion tax hike designed to bestow a massive infusion of funds to inner-city school districts, a hike that immediately sank our state economy into a deeper recession. Business bankruptcies jumped by 150 percent, 300,000 jobs were lost, and the unemployment rate rocketed up to 9.1 percent–the highest in the nation at that time.

Governor Florio declared that his tax hike was an unavoidable dose of bitter medicine to balance the budget. The truth of the matter is that Florio was among the three biggest spending governors in the nation. In 1991, the budget grew by 8.4 percent; that increase was followed by a 1992 budget expansion of 26.1 percent (the third largest in the nation). In his first two years in office, the budget grew by more than $3,000 per family.

According to the NJ state labor department, unemployment rate rose to a 32-year high of 9.8 percent in September of 2009.

All of his history is lost (or deliberately forgotten by) Sweeney and his allies. “We need to fix the economy,” says Sweeney in the closing hours of 2013. “That’s the number one issue in this state. It surpassed property taxes in all the polling and everything else. It’s the economy and that’s because we have too many of our friends who have been out of work.”

I believe Sweeney is using Republicans as a scapegoat for the actions placed in motion by his party. How could you come to any other conclusion if you know the history, Save Jerseyans?

Unfortunately, political posturing does nothing to help the people of the state.

State Senate President Steve Sweeney says, “[b]eing 45th in employment is not a position we want to be in the State of New Jersey.” He doesn’t comprehend that his actions and that of the past three administrations got us there; it didn’t happen overnight.

Perhaps instead of looking at where his finger is pointing, he needs to look at the hand to which the finger is attached!

Joe Sinagra
About Joe Sinagra 73 Articles
Joe is a U.S. Air Force veteran, small businessman and former candidate for the New Jersey legislature and New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District. He continues to actively work for GOP causes and candidates in the Central New Jersey region.

1 Comment

  1. What sucks is the democrats are just biding their time until Christie isn’t governor. That is why they are sitting on their hands with Supreme Court nominees and everything else. They feel that after Christie leaves office – they will once again have complete control over ALL branches of the NJ government. They have even gone so far to convince many New Jerseyans that there is some rule that the NJ Supreme Court needs to be primarily democrat.

    I love NJ – but it is sickening to see how this great state is being driven into the ground and kept from being the economic powerhouse that it should be.

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