Tornoe’s Toon: New Jersey and Education Cuts
Cross posted at Laugh!
New Jersey faces an $11 billion dollar deficit, so it is true that every cut will be difficult and the state needs to share the sacrifice.
However, for Governor Christie, sharing the sacrifice means allowing tax cuts for everyone making over $400,000 to stay in place, increased salaries for his staff (including 2 full-time staffers for his wife, one of which making over $100,000) and dramatic cuts to the state’s education system by slashing school aid by over $800 million.
Christie’s refusal to extend the surtax on families earning more than $400,000 will cost the state treasury $900 million. In other words, extending the surtax would allow him to cancel these school cuts.
Shared sacrifice indeed.
If you’d like to contact me, feel free to drop me a line at robtornoe@delawareliberal.net. You can also follow me on twitter @RobTornoe.
Tags: Chris Christie, Chris Christie school cuts, New Jersey politics
Ouch! That one’s going to leave a mark! I read that Christie has a 33% approval rating in New Jersey right now. I guess they’re having a serious case of buyer’s remorse. His policy seems a bit short-sighted considering many, many more New Jersey residents benefit from the education system than make more than $400K/year.
Now that New Jersey taxpayers have coughed up $34.1 billion since 2003 to kill 1 million Iraqi’s, New Jersey has an $11 billion deficit and can no longer adequately educate their kids.
Karma bites.
They already have the highest property taxes in the nation and their top rate is among the highest.
Some of these cuts are going to be difficult indeed…teacher cuts, increased class sizes etc. However, much of the “education cuts” have to do with retirement age, healthcare payments and pensions etc.
This cartoon, although very clever, is grossly overstating the impact this is going to have on kids…much like the teacher unions have.
If the teachers unions were so concerned with student wellbeing, why did so many of them refuse to take the one year freeze?
Republicans can get elected pushing the GOP’s magical unicorn economics.. Governing? That is a different story.
And yet NJ can educate its kids for less than DE does. Education costs are not the driver for property taxes in NJ — it is the cost of government. Since the place is wall to wall incorporated entities, replicating administration and services about every 20 miles or so, NJ citizens have a pretty high burden of government to support. McGreevey and Corzine worked at trying to get townships and other areas to consolidate without much (a little, though) success. But apparently this guy thinks that making teachers take pay cuts — rather than getting these towns to cut back — is somehow a panacea. But the magical unicorn economics apparently includes shortchanging the people educating their children. I just hope that these kids remember forever just how little value the adults around them placed on their education.
Though it pains me I have to agree with Cassandra. While I do think that there are problems with education funding and spending, multiple redundant layers of government are a much bigger problem. I grew up in NJ in a small town w/ ~15,000 people. We had our own police, fire, ambulance, tax collector, mayor, city council, etc etc. The next town over has about 10,000 residents. They had exactly the same services we had. Massive savings overnight if they grouped together for those services.