By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Early Tuesday morning while most of you were sleeping, Save Jerseyans, Republicans in the General Assembly helped Democrats reach a deal for a 23-cent per gallon increase of New Jersey’s gas tax in exchange for a modest decrease in the state sales tax – to 6% from 7% – phased it over a year-and-a-half.
Governor Christie reportedly approves of the change to the original gas tax hike consensus; we’re still waiting for the Senate to weigh in.
Conservative GOP Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll is less enthused than his fellow Morris County resident.
“As bad as the original proposal was, the ‘deal’ now is even worse,” Carroll wrote on Facebook. “The debt is still in; the gas tax increase is still in; but the only redeeming aspect of the bill — the estate tax elimination — is now gone. Welcome to New Jersey.”
Yup. Pretty much. That’s why it’s substantively bad. The politics is arguably even more atrocious.
The Democrats who voted no? Bob Andrzejczak (D-1), Joann Downey (D-11), Eric Houghtaling (D-11), Bruce Land (D-1), Vince Mazzeo (D-2), John Wisniewski (D-19), and Andrew Zwicker (D-16).
How convenient! As regular readers know, the Dems picked up the above referenced LD-11 and LD-16 seats last fall. LD1 and LD2 are among the state’s most competitive districts – among the only ones left. These are the ones we’ve could have beaten in 2017.
Now, in order to aid the Democrat Assembly majority in obtaining the majority vote it wanted (???), we’ve given those Democrats cover on the coming gas tax thanks to the following Republicans who voted YEA: Jon Bramnick, Chris Brown, Rob Clifton, BettyLou DeCroce, Joe Howarth, Sean Kean, Nancy Munoz, David Rible, Maria Rodriguez-Gregg, and Scott Rumana.
What can I say today that I haven’t been saying for months? And years? We’re never going to save Jersey (pardon the plug) until we have the courage and, frankly, the political chops to take these Democrat jerks on and hold them accountable for their bad governance.
Our team let them off the hook on Tuesday morning. Big time. To say I’m disappointed in an understatement.
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