A handful of New Jersey Republicans are calling bull on the Murphy-Menendez-Booker tax reform narrative.
One of them is Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll (R-Morris).
“In short, NJ finds itself in a pinch because of leftist policies,” said Carroll on social media Monday night. “Progressive taxation hits NJ hard, while means-tested programs, like the ACA, send most of the benefits to AR. Meanwhile, progressive policies at home keep taxes, especially property taxes, stratospheric, to fund absurd spending in Democratic jurisdictions and as sops to public employee unions.”
Carroll made his comments in the middle of a verbal war between Tom MacArthur, the GOP’s 3rd District Congressman, and the Governor-elect and New Jersey’s Democrat U.S. Senators over the Republican federal tax reform package working its way through the reconciliation process on Capitol Hill.
House and Senate Republicans are still parsing differences between their respective bills with the hope of getting something to the President before Christmas. Back at home, Governor-elect Murphy hasn’t reconciled his objection to alleged federal tax hikes with his own pledge to raise $1.3 billion in state tax levies; he’s also been silent on a proposal to eliminate New Jersey’s own cap on the deduction of property taxes under the gross income tax.
For his part, the Morris legislator says there isn’t a solution to what ails New Jersey taxpayers that doesn’t involve changing horses in Trenton.
“The solution to these problems is simple: elect conservative Republicans who will enact major tax cuts, focused squarely on NJ residents (say, by reenacting Bill Bradley’s 28% top rate) and major spending cuts – like ending the ACA – which will stop sending NJ $$$ to OK. Elect those same people to NJ offices, so that property taxes can be slashed through equal educational vouchers, and income taxes made low and flat, to discourage envy and provide less incentive for people of means to vamoose, while curtailing the power of public employee unions,” added Carroll.
“Our problems, locally and nationally, owe their existence to leftist Big Government, tax and spend programs, which are expressly designed to shaft NJ. The solution is smaller government with lower, flatter taxes and a lot less spending.”
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