An interesting compromise

The Record offers an interesting approach to the sales tax fight: Make the hike temporary and revisit the discussion next year.

If next year at this time, the state’s economy has rebounded, then the tax hike can lapse. If the economy still lags, lawmakers will have had a full year to determine where state government can be most effectively reduced by $1.1 billion. If Trenton can’t come up with the cuts or find new revenue sources by this time next year, then the sales tax hike should stay.

Skeptics raise the legitimate concern that taxes that are pitched as “temporary solutions” invariably end up as permanent, but that’s not necessarily the case. Three years ago, for example, Idaho adopted a one-cent sales-tax increasethat expired — on schedule — in 2005.

We are one of the most fiscally dysfunctional states in the nation. As an editorial in The Wall Street Journal pointed out yesterday, at least 40 states are operating in the black, while only a handful, including “perpetually hapless New Jersey,” still find themselves in budget holes.

Mr. Corzine is trying to finally put this state’s financial house in order. Last-minute, panic-driven “solutions” are the last thing New Jersey needs right now.

We won’t be getting an 11th-hour donation from Warren Buffett. A temporary 1-cent tax increase is the best way to solve the budget impasse.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet