State Cuts to Programs for the Poor – New Jersey

Budget cuts could hit low-income NJ residents, By Geoff Mulvihill (AP), March 15, 2010, Philadelphia Inquirer: “New Jersey’s days as a place where the government is unusually generous to the needy may be numbered as a new governor pushes wide-ranging spending cuts to solve a deep budget crisis. Gov. Chris Christie is set to unveil his first spending plan Tuesday after months of preaching shared sacrifice. From what he’s done so far, it’s clear that applies to lower-income people, too, in a state that’s among the most generous in the nation when it comes to unemployment benefits and taxpayer-funded health care for the working poor. Already, he has cut the state’s mass-transit subsidy and stopped enrolling some lower-income adults in a subsidized health insurance program. He’s also proposed reducing weekly unemployment checks and, even before he was sworn in, hinted that food banks could see their state aid cut and told hospitals their reimbursements for treating the indigent will be cut in June…”