New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is not a fan of the executive orders President Donald Trump signed over the weekend aimed at providing Americans with some financial relief amid the coronavirus pandemic, Politico reports.
During a press briefing in Trenton, Murphy blasted Trump’s actions as short-sighted, counterproductive and not enough to help struggling Americans.
Trump moved to give the jobless a $400 weekly unemployment benefit boost, suspend payroll taxes, defer federal student loan payments as well as issue a moratorium on evictions after Congress failed to come up with a relief package.
Murphy said the benefits will cost the state “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Under Trump’s plan, states will administer and pay 25% of the weekly unemployment insurance benefits, which are less than the $600 boosted weekly unemployment benefits that expired on July 31.
Trump’s actions don’t consider the expense of setting up a program in order to administer those benefits, Murphy said.
“States are going broke and millions of Americans are unemployed, yet the solution calls for the states to create a new program we can’t afford to begin with and don't know how to administer,” Murphy said. “I cannot sit here right now and say New Jersey could afford to participate in this program. The president’s actions do not provide one dime for state and local governments who are the frontline responders to this pandemic.”
He slammed Trump’s decision to suspend payroll taxes because a “payroll tax holiday will not save workers anything in the long run, as they will still be on the hook for the taxes owed come next April 15.”
“A payroll tax holiday means nothing to the unemployed when there is no paycheck coming in,” he added.
He said all the tax holiday does is divert billions of dollars from Social Security and Medicare.
He urged Congress to work together to pass a relief package, according to Politico.
“The time for political games ended months ago,” Murphy said. “We are proving as a state what is possible when we react to this pandemic not according to politics but according to science and the direct needs of people we serve. Let’s see some of that selflessness in Washington.”
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