$400M set for road and bridge work, none for NJ Transit

The Record is reporting on legislation sponsored by Senator Steve Oroho and getting fast-tracked approval by the Senate President and Governor that will

appropriate $400 million from the state's Transportation Trust Fund for "immediate bridge and road repairs," but according to the Record the legislation is "notably omitting additional funding for NJ Transit."

The Senate President's office issued the following statement: "The funding will come from existing resources from the [Transportation Trust Fund] and it will be used for state roads, bridges and tunnels in every county in New Jersey.  This will expedite the needed investment in the state’s infrastructure and provide an increase in support for transportation work in the current fiscal year."

The Oroho sponsored legislation is scheduled to receive its first hearing in front of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee on Thursday.You can read the full article here:

http://www.northjersey.com/story/news/new-jersey/2017/03/08/400m-set-road-and-bridge-work-none-nj-transit/98875644/

Trump's infrastructure jobs need state matching funds

You know that it is over for the nattering nabobs of negativism when all they have are lies and disinformation.

Take this post put up over the weekend on a Tea Party website:

FACT #1: We are paying less for gasoline now than what we paid 18 months ago.  Costs have declined dramatically from 2014.  Here is the graph that proves it:

FACT #2: The Tax Reform bill (S-2411/A-12) actually cut taxes by $1.4 billion:

   - A tax cut on retirement income that means most New Jersey retirees will no longer pay state income tax.  This tax cut is worth about $2,000 annually to the average retiree.

- Elimination of the Estate Tax.  This protects family farms and small businesses from being forced to choose between paying taxes or closing and laying-off workers.

- Tax cut for veterans.  Honorably discharged active duty, guard, and reserve veterans now get an additional $3,000 personal income tax deduction.

- Tax credit for low-income workers.  Worth $100 annually to the average worker.

- Sales tax cut.  Worth another $100 annually to the average consumer.

- Property tax relief.  The legislation doubled the amount going to county and municipal governments to repair roads and bridges and so offset property tax increases.

After 28 years of failing to adjust the gas tax for inflation and borrowing to make up the difference the TTF was deeply in debt.  The last time the gas tax produced enough revenue to pay for New Jersey's transportation needs was in 1990.  Because of the debt that was allowed to accumulate, by 2015 the annual cost of that debt to taxpayers was $1.1 billion -- outstripping the $750 million revenue from the gas tax.  That's what happens when you suspend the iron rules of economics and tell people that they can have something for nothing.

The Transportation Trust Fund was broke.  Road and bridge projects funded by the TTF were frozen.  That included all those county and municipal projects dependent on TTF funding.  Work had stopped. Without funding from the TTF, local governments would have had to raise property taxes by an average of more than $500 a household just to make up for the lost aid to keep county and local roads safely maintained.  And if county and local governments failed to repair roads and bridges and allowed people to use them anyway, the eventual cost in litigation to cover the injuries sustained as the result could vastly outstrip the costs to maintain them in the first place.

So yes, under these circumstances, the long over-due adjustment for inflation did result in the tax on gasoline going up by 23-cents a gallon. 

FACT #3:  President Ronald Reagan doubled the federal tax on gasoline because, as a conservative, he understood that a user tax (like the gas tax) is the fairest form of taxation.  Ronald Reagan, the greatest Republican President of the last century, the father of the modern conservative movement.

FACT #4:  President Donald Trump is right.  America's infrastructure is a disgrace and New Jersey's transportation infrastructure is among the worst. 

The American Society of Civil Engineers issued a report in 2016 and we've taken snapshots directly from it:

Now that is what the professionals -- the best in their field -- had to say. 

Today, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, America is on the cusp of a huge boom in federal spending on infrastructure.  Twenty states are in the process of raising their tax on gasoline so that they have the matching funds available to participate in the federal projects coming our way.  New Jersey is, for once, ahead of many of the others. 

President Trump's plan is to spend a trillion dollars creating over a hundred thousand new jobs and billions in related economic activity.

Some, like the fellow who posted the negative comments above, already have nice, comfortable jobs with the state, a nice pension and benefits.  But others are not as fortunate.  President Trump's plan is going to mean the chance at a future for them.

Memo to Mark Quick, Harvey Roseff, and others

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin writes a dead-on column today that takes aim at all those people who believe that the blessings of civilization -- things like roads and bridges that don't end up killing you or your family members -- are birthrights instead of things we have to pay for.  Malkin writes:

"News flash, kids: Things aren’t free. Things cost money. And 'free' things provided to you by the government cost other people’s money."

Malkin is using this general principle of conservatism, something every Republican should understand, to make a point about ObamaCare, and a larger point about the behavior of some of our country's younger voters.  Drawing a bead on what she calls one of "the most politically popular provisions of the Orwellian-titled Affordable Care Act" she continues:

"...the so-called 'slacker mandate.' It’s the requirement that employer-based health plans cover employees’ children until they turn 26 years old.

That’s right: Twenty-freaking-six.

Is it any wonder why we have a nation of dependent drool-stained crybabies on college campuses who are still bawling about the election results one week later?

...Who pays for this unfunded government mandate? As usual, it’s responsible working people who bear the burden.

Earlier this year, the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the No Slacker Left Behind provision resulted in wage reductions of about $1,200 a year for workers with employer-based insurance coverage — whether or not they had adult children on their plans. In effect, childless working people are subsidizing workers with adult children who would rather stay on their parents than get their own.

Moreover, according to company surveys and other economic analysis, the slacker mandate has resulted in overall increased health care costs of between 1 and 3 percent. The nonpartisan American Health Policy Institute reported one firm’s estimate of millennial coverage mandate costs at a whopping $69 million over 10 years.

...The Obama White House will brag that the slacker mandate has resulted in increased coverage for an estimated 3 million people. As usual with Obamacare numbers, it’s Common Core, book-cooked math. Health care analyst Avik Roy took a closer look and found that the inflated figure came from counting '(1) young adults on Medicaid and other government programs, for whom the under-26 mandate doesn’t apply; and (2) people who gained coverage due to the quasi-recovery from the Great Recession.'

To add insult to injury, another NBER study found that roughly 5 percent of people younger than 26 dropped out of the workforce after the provision was implemented. They used their spare time to increase their socialization, sleeping, physical fitness and personal pursuit of 'meaningfulness.'

Then there are the hidden costs of the millennial mandate: the cultural consequences. All this 'free' stuff, detached from those actually paying the bills, reduces the incentives for 20-somethings to grow up and seek independent lives and livelihoods. Why bother? The societal sanctions have been eroded.

Now, the nation is suffering the consequences of decades of that collective coddling. Precious snowflakes can’t handle rejection at the ballot box or responsibilities in the marketplace. Appropriately enough, the new virtue signals of tantrum-throwing young leftists stirring up trouble are safety pins — to show 'solidarity' with groups supposedly endangered by Donald Trump.

Safety pins are also handy — for holding up the government-manufactured diapers in which too many overgrown dependents are swaddled."

You can read Michelle Malkin's full column here:

http://www.gopusa.com/?p=17241?omhide=true

Michelle Malkin is a senior editor at Conservative Review.  For more articles and videos from Michelle, visit ConservativeReview.com.  Her email address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

Reason Study author says gas tax must go up

We've all heard about the Reason Foundation study that claimed New Jersey had the most expensive roads in America.  The Reason study was controversial and other studies refuted it -- such as the one coming out of Rutgers University's Voorhees Transportation Center.

Some politicians seized upon the Reason study to argue that cost-cutting efficiencies should be put in place before any more money went to repair and maintain the state's roads and bridges.  We wonder if they would feel the same about the grossly mismanaged Veterans Administration -- close all those hospitals and services and dump the wounded out on the streets until the VA operates more efficiently. 

Others claimed that they could fund the entire Transportation Trust Fund (TTF) with savings from efficiencies and cost-cutting.  No numbers were produced to support this, but in testimony, Barauch Feigenbaum (Reason's Assistant Director of Policy) offered some excellent recommendations as to the areas in which significant savings could be achieved. 

The lamentable fact is that not since 1990 has the state's user tax on gasoline and diesel produced enough revenue to cover the cost to maintain the state's transportation system.  That year the gas tax collected $404.9 million to fund a $365 million transportation program.  The tax on gasoline and diesel hasn't gone up for 28 years, hasn't even kept up with inflation, leading to more and more being borrowed to pay for road and bridge maintenance and repair.  Today the cost of the debt service alone exceeds $1.1 billion.  In contrast, the gas tax collected just a bit more than $750 million in 2015. 

No wonder the author of the Reason study, David Hartgen (Emeritus Professor of Transportation Studies at UNC Charlotte), recently told New Jersey media that there was no way around the revenue problem the now-bankrupt TTF faces: 

Even as some say his report proves that New Jersey must cut costs before hiking the gas tax, Hartgen says the opposite may be true. The transportation trust fund is now $30 billion in debt. Without new revenue from the gas tax or some other source, it cannot spend any money on new construction. 

“I don’t think budget cuts will work,” Hartgen said. “They need to look at the gas tax.”

Your cheap talk caused the TTF crisis: Now own it

Let's call them the irresponsibles.

Those abominable know-it-alls with the flip answers in their back pockets.  Those cheap charlatans who never fact check their prescriptions.  The belching bar stool prognosticators who get their insights from the scratchings on rest room stalls.

Those who throw the "Reason Report" around the way a earlier group of brain monkeys chanted "WMD's" can look on their good work this week.  Road work stopped, boulders falling into the street in Andover Township.  Good job.

Good job too for all those who own the slogan that you shouldn't "throw money" at something.  Sure.  When they're hungry, they don't "throw money" at the problem.  They don't go to a supermarket to buy food, or to a restaurant to buy food, they go out and forage, hunt for it, and with their skill set maybe find some carrion on the road.  Rather than "throw money" at it, that is what they do.

A 105-year old bridge is falling down in Byram.  Now the rhetoric begins.  One politician (who has tried and tried again) blames the Governor instead of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Yes, that basic principle, familiar in everyday life, the universal law of decay.  Ultimately everything falls apart and disintegrates over time.  Material things are not eternal.  But no, according to this hip-pocket amateur, non-civil engineer, it's the Governor.  Then, after the bridge crumbles, a local elected politician chimes in with that sad, unimaginative rendition of "let's not throw money" at the problem. 

OK, I'm with you, let's not.   So now what are you going to do?  And don't say find another source of money, because that would be "throwing money at it" too -- the only difference is that it is different money.  OK dumb asses, how are you going to fix the bridge?  Volunteers?  Maybe that would work.  First, you could ask local businesses to donate the materials needed.  Then, you could canvass all the residents of Byram to find people qualified to build a bridge -- or anything, for that matter.  Heavy equipment costs money, but hey, the pyramids were built by hand, without heavy equipment.  Well, they cost a few thousand or thousands of dead slaves, but you didn't actually have to hire slaves, did you?  So maybe Byram could press its citizens into service?  We can see it now.  The early morning call ups and those long lines of Byramese hauling cement and stones to the building site.  Oh, what happy days!

Or... you could throw money at it.

Fortunately, there are some state and local elected officials who understand basic math.  They understand that the gas tax hasn't been raised since 1988. They know, as everyone knows, that you can't buy much in 2016 at the price you paid in 1988. 

The 14 1/2 cents per gallon of gasoline we paid to repair our roads and bridges in 1988 would be 29 cents today just on account of inflation.  Now add on to that the 10 1/2 cents needed to pay interest on the debt -- because instead of paying as we went we put it on a credit card -- and you'll have some idea of what we need to pay per gallon to maintain and repair our roads and bridges.  

Some choose to be ignorant of this.  They try to change the subject by claiming that they pay too much in other taxes.  And they are right.  You do pay too much OTHER taxes -- just not enough to fix our roads and bridges.  So do something to cut those OTHER taxes.  Don't complain about what you're not paying enough of.

It's like having a mortgage that you are paying too much a month for.  You don't head into a restaurant and tell the waiter that your mortgage payment is too high so can you have the menu at 1988 prices please.  Do you?  What you do is pay the 2016 price for your dinner and then go renegotiate your mortgage. 

Do something that corrects the problem, don't compound the problem by creating a problem somewhere else.  And don't rely on silly rhetoric to cover up a lack of will, a lack of courage, a lack of honesty, and a lack of brains.