Too many New Jersey families are living paycheck to paycheck with little to fall back on. Communities already facing deep racial and economic inequality struggle as child care, health care, housing, and utility costs continue to rise. With cuts to critical federal funding, it is more urgent than ever that we act now to lower costs, expand opportunities and help close the state’s widening racial wealth gap. We must protect and prioritize working people – not wealthy corporations.
Make Childcare Affordable for Every Family
New Jersey is facing a child care affordability crisis that is hurting families and our economy. To create a system of Child Care For All we must:
- Fully fund and expand the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) for families earning up to 300% of the Federal Poverty Level (A1374).
- Invest in the Child Care Workforce to increase wages and ensure access to health care and other benefits.
- Establish a universally affordable child care system funded through fair taxes on the super wealthy and highly profitable corporations.
Ensure Healthcare Is Affordable and Accessible to All New Jerseyans
The impact of federal cuts and the rising costs of health care are unsustainable for the state and residents. We need to stabilize the system by lowering costs, increase accountability, and access to affordable health coverage and services. Actions we can take include:
- Create a public health insurance option for residents lacking access to affordable coverage such as a NJ Family Care buy-in program or a Basic Health Plan authorized under the Affordable Care Act.
- Protect children’s access to health care by sustaining Cover All Kids (CAK). Explore moving CAK from a Managed Care Organization (MCO) to an Administrative Service Organization (ASO) model to reduce cost and align new federal mandates.
- Prioritize our Health Insurance Affordability Fund dollars for families under 400% of the federal poverty limit.
- Amend the Health Insurance Affordability (HIA) Reinsurance Program.
- Raise the current minimum attachment rate of $35,000 and index it to premium rate increases. By increasing and indexing the attachment rate, New Jersey could free up Health Insurance Affordability Fund dollars to support subsidies for a new state coverage option, such as an NJ FamilyCare Buy-In/Public Option or a Basic Health Plan. Indexing would promote long-term sustainability and accountability as market conditions fluctuate. (Links to helpful reference information can be found here and here.)
- Strengthen mechanisms to lower costs and cap price of health care services.
- Codify and strengthen the Office of Health Care Affordability & Transparency with meaningful enforcement and stronger cost growth benchmarks (A1729/S3012).
- Lower drug prices by empowering the Prescription Drug Affordability Council (PDAC) to set upper payment limits on high-cost, widely used drugs that have resulted in significant savings in Colorado.
- Improve health care price transparency to better understand and control costs by establishing an All-Payer Claims Database.
- Establish Medicare reference-based pricing reimbursement for hospital services in State Health Benefits Plan and ACA Marketplace plans.
- Strengthen the Department of Banking and Insurance (DOBI) Rate Review Authority
- Provide direct relief to individuals and families by creating a statewide Medical Debt Mediation Program to protect patients and resolve medical debt before court action.
Fair and Affordable Housing Access and Protection
- Establish a Community Reinvestment Act in New Jersey to ensure that all financial institutions operating in the state meet the credit needs of low- and moderate-income (LMI) communities and communities of color throughout New Jersey equitably and to address historic and persistent discriminatory practices and racial and economic disparities.
- Expand foreclosure prevention programs and housing counseling.
- Increase funding for our state’s Foreclosure Prevention Program to make it more accessible to assist more families losing their homes.
- Require lenders to refer borrowers to HUD-approved counseling.
- Increase funding for housing counseling agencies to support the demand for counselors.
- Protect tenants and stabilize rents.
- Set standards against excessive rent hikes.
- Guarantee the Right to Counsel in eviction cases.
- Create a statewide rent regulation enforcement unit.
- Establish affirmative investigations by the Office of Attorney General into the violations of rent regulations.
- Ensure the majority of revenue from the newly enacted Mansion Tax goes into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and the other housing related services and subsidies including rental assistance and foreclosure prevention.
Tax Reforms
- Expand eligibility and the Child Tax Credit for children up to 18 in households earning up to $150,000
- Expand the NJ Earned Income Tax Credit to all workers, including domestic abuse survivors
- Establish a “Walmart Tax” or Large Employer Health Care Assessment
- Create a new tax or mandate on large corporations whose low-wage workers disproportionately rely on publicly funded health programs such as Medicaid. Revenue from this assessment could help offset federal funding losses.
- Lower the $500,000 income eligibility threshold for StayNJ to $150,000.
- Create a Super Millionaires Tax with new brackets for incomes over $2M, $5M, and $10M.
- End offshore profit-shifting by requiring multinational corporations to report overseas profits.
- Pass the Climate Superfund Act to make the largest fossil fuel corporations pay for the damage caused by climate change.
Affordable Utility Rates
- Conduct a comprehensive cost/benefits analysis of various electric generation sources to identify the cheapest, cleanest and most readily available sources we should prioritize for expansion to meet future energy needs.
- Protect ratepayers from rate increases that result from data centers' development. This includes giving the NJBPU the ability to review and correct PJM load projections which have been inflated by data centers rate shopping practices.
- Require utilities to get NJBPU approval for all new transmission infrastructure. The state does not currently have the authority to approve or deny these projects, even though NJ ratepayers are expected to pay for them.
- Adopt a policy that requires the NJBPU to conduct a rate impact analysis for any rate increase proposal submitted to them by a utility company.
- Enact policies to reduce the current 9.8% Rate of Return utility company upcharge currently passed onto ratepayers in addition to construction and maintenance costs of the NJ energy infrastructure they manage.
- Study, adopt and adhere to a New Jersey Utility Affordability Standard that would limit the NJBPU’s authority to approve rate increases that are unaffordable for utility customers and do not meet that Standard.
- Ensure a robust voice for ratepayers in all utility matters. This includes:
- Maintaining the NJ Division of Rate Council
- Expanding the currently understaffed and under resourced technical staff at both Rate Council and Board of Public Utilities to enable them to engage in all rate proceedings for bill increases made by the utility industry and to fully evaluate important policy issues.
- Allowing consumers and/or their representatives to participate in all public hearings, working groups, roundtable discussions, etc.
Strengthen Government Accountability and Transparency
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Restore the state pay to play prohibition and limit special interest funding of elections.
- Strengthen the Open Public Records Acts to make government at every level more transparent and access to records easier for residents.
- Require no bill be advanced without 72 hours’ notice and ensure bill language is available to the public.
- Support release of the final budget proposal in early June to ensure adequate time for public analysis, comment and participation in the budget process.
- Make Statehouse facilities more welcoming by holding Open Houses, reinstating food service and making meeting and event space available to groups.