On June 29, N.J. Governor Christie signed the budget passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature. In addition to $1 billion in education and student aid cuts (hitting urban districts especially hard) and $450 million less in aid to cities, the budget puts a 2.5% cap on salary increases for all local government workers, terminates state health insurance for 12,000 immigrants, cuts $9 million from legal services to the poor and cuts state payments to households with a disabled person.
The Democrats mounted only token opposition; they “won” a paltry $81 million in restorations out of over $2 billion in total cuts proposed by Christie. The restoration package included the General Assistance (GA) program, which was slated to wipe out cash benefits for employable adults on July 1.
In 1992, New Jersey politicians tried to make GA a six-month program. At that time, those would-be killer cutbacks were met with a massive campaign, led in part by the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR). In the six months leading up to the cutoff, we organized mass marches; and led a sit-in at the Governor’s office in December. All of this, along with other actions statewide, stopped the cuts cold, led to the creation of more jobs and convinced a number of people to join PLP.
This year the opposition to the cuts was highlighted by a student walkout on April 27, which PLP members helped organize, and a May 22 Trenton rally of 35,000 workers. But Christie and the Democrats continued to dance together on workers’ backs. The Democrats first voted to reinstate the “millionaires’ tax”, which would slice $1 billion off the cuts. Then, when Christie vetoed it, they dropped the tax in their desperation to make a deal with him. Workers and students are making plans to continue the struggle into the fall and beyond.
Both parties hid the $3 billion in this budget being paid as interest to the bondholders and bankers. The union leaders who called the Trenton rally did nothing to expose this or organize more actions to fight the cuts. After the budget passed, Christie vetoed a tax increase on businesses that would have gone into the state unemployment fund.
Christie originally called for maximum weekly unemployment benefits to be cut by $50 per week. Instead, he has settled for expanding the reasons for denying unemployment claims based on alleged “gross misconduct.” This will give more bosses the incentive to concoct rationales for firing workers and then deny them the benefits they have paid into while working.
Cuts to legal services programs will cost almost 100 jobs, including layoffs, buyouts, and resignations. This will, in turn, result in huge reductions in services to unemployed and under-employed workers who face evictions, utility shutoffs, benefit cuts or denials, foreclosures, creditor lawsuits, etc. A committee of union members did organize to try and stop these cuts. However, most members thought lobbying the politicians or relying on the “influence” of statewide legal services’ bosses was the best strategy. In the end, workers learned the bitter lesson that the Democrats’ promises of restoring cuts made to legal services’ programs were all hollow.
Cutting money used to meet basic needs will kill people. The bankers and bosses need to tighten the racist screws on the most vulnerable section of the working class to offset lost profits from their own economic crisis. They also need to increase the racist scapegoating of black, Latino and immigrant workers to distract workers’ anger away from their real enemy — capitalism — and try to mobilize support for their unending oil wars.
Communist revolution will abolish the capitalist competition and constant drive to lower wages which is behind unemployment, and the capitalist crises that lead to economic depressions. PLP aims to lead that revolution- join us.