Garden State Voters Weren’t Guarding Their Wallets Last November
….. and now they will pay dearly.
Investors Business Daily rips New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine for raising taxes after he said he’d lower them during the election campaign:
Gov. Jon Corzine joins his tax-happy predecessor, Jim Florio — and former President Bill Clinton — in a rogues’ gallery of Democrats elected under false fiscal pretenses.
Between election and inauguration, Clinton “discovered” a budget deficit worse than he imagined, and so the middle-class tax cut he campaigned on in 1992 had to be put on hold — forever, as it turned out — and income tax rates raised.
Similarly, Florio vowed not to raise taxes in his 1990 gubernatorial campaign, then slapped a $2.6 billion tax hike on New Jerseyans, the biggest in U.S. history. It made Florio a one-term governor.
Newly elected Gov. Corzine is the latest Democratic promise breaker — though the former Goldman Sachs CEO gets points for subtlety. Instead of restoring property tax rebates that were cut last year plus increasing them by 10%, as he promised, Corzine told New Jersey lawmakers he’ll increase existing rebates by 10%.
New Jerseyans pay the country’s highest property taxes, and the gimmicky rebate change may muddle some into thinking Corzine actually kept his promise. He didn’t.
“It took Gov. Corzine less than 90 days in office to break his central campaign promise,” Republican Assemblywomen Jennifer Beck complained. Nonelderly homeowners end up with only about $35 extra, say Republicans, but property taxes are up on average by over $1,300 per homeowner in the last four years.
Corzine is also breaking a pledge to fully fund state pensions, while hiking sales taxes by a percentage point and imposing a commercial property transfer tax, a corporate business tax surcharge and a cigarette tax hike, to name only some.
If I recall correctly, when he was in the US Senate, Corzine opposed any and all Bush tax cuts.
So excuse me if my sympathy level is reading “empty” for Corzine supporters who believed him about cutting state taxes, but who are now wailing and gnashing their teeth.
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UPDATE: Satirist John Semmens at Arizona Conservative tells us, in the top article at the link, how Corzine is REALLY going to fix New Jersey’s ailing economy.
