Corzine Gets It Right For Once
Call it adult supervision.
Gov. Jon Corzine said Tuesday New Jersey is getting an unexpected budget windfall, but the extra cash should be socked away to help reduce the state’s debt rather than spent to restore proposed cuts.
State Treasurer David Rousseau listens to a question from a member of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee Tuesday.“Am I pleased we have the windfall that allows us to pay down debt? Absolutely,” the governor said after Treasurer David Rousseau updated lawmakers on the state’s budget outlook. New Jersey has $32 billion in debt, the fourth-heaviest burden in the nation.
Rousseau told the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee that the state will take in $374 million more than the Corzine administration expected from now until the next budget year ends in June 2009. Most of the windfall comes from the income tax and corporate taxes based on tax returns last year, when the economy was in better shape.
“As the governor has said since February, we are at a turning point,” Rousseau said, stressing that extra revenue should not equate to extra spending. “The time has come for us, together, to say: No more.”
– Joe Donohue/The Star-Ledger
Spend, Spend, Spend: Big-box retailers like Home Depot, Sears and Wal-Mart are running various promotions to try to persuade taxpayers to spend the paper or electronic stimulus checks they will receive between late April and mid-July. Eligible single taxpayers can receive as much as $600, and married couples $1,200, as part of a government program to stimulate the economy.
Consumers are expected to spend about one-third of the $107 billion in rebates they will receive, leading to a pickup in consumer spending by the third quarter, according to Barclays Capital Research, the New York investment banking unit of London-based Barclays Bank. “The stimulus should keep the economy in modest growth territory,” Barclays said in a report this month.
Some consumers will spend more of their check on necessities such as food and gas rather than discretionary items such as electronics and apparel, according to a survey released Tuesday by the National Retail Federation. Fewer people plan to buy furniture or a car compared with a survey done in February, the trade group said.
– Joseph R. Perone/The Star-ledger
