By Paul Mulshine/The Star Ledger
Incoming New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says he's serious about getting the state Legislature to permit him to engage in class warfare with the wealthy people of Manhattan.
De Blasio is quoted as saying he wants to add a surtax on the city's already-astronomical income tax to fund preschool:
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio told reporters today that a substantial, organized campaign would soon be launched to ensure the State Legislature approves the centerpiece of his policy agenda: a tax hike on the city’s high income earners to fund universal pre-kindergarten and expanded after-school programs.
Skeptics have labeled Mr. de Blasio’s plan quixotic because Republicans in the State Senate and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have publicly stated their opposition to higher taxes, but Mr. de Blasio insisted Albany lawmakers would soon be won over.
“I want to say in the coming days we’ll be talking a lot more about a very substantial campaign to ensure that this plan is passed in Albany,” Mr. de Blasio said, taking questions at a food pantry event in Brooklyn. “We intend to put together support from all over the city, all over the state, to get a very strong effort to make sure that our children are served and to go into the new year ready to win that fight in Albany.”
If de Blasio is serious about committing himself to class warfare against the people who pay most of his city's taxes, then all I can say is: Have at it, comrade!
We'll welcome all of those rich people here in New Jersey. We'll welcome all those Wall Street businesses he's demonizing as well.
It never really made sense for them to be located on an island anyway. There's plenty of room here on the mainland. We've got much better transportation links by air, sea, rail and road. And we have lots of vacant office space.
Any politician promising free preschool is just lying, plain and simply. The cost of adding two new grades to public school simply cannot be paid.
Maybe de Blasio hasn't noticed it yet, but rich people pay way more in taxes than they require in services. Having a lot of them around makes life easier for the rest of us.
And as I've noted before, even if deBlasio were to get his new tax, it would produce only a fraction of the money needed to offer universal preschool.
Just as with the fake promise of preschool Barbara Buono made in her failed gubernatorial campaign, the tax in question would fund just a small percentage of the cost of adding two grades of preschool:
He’s not the only one making that proposal. Some version of it seems to have gone viral among Democrats running for office this year.
Newark Mayor Cory Booker made a similar pitch in his successful run for the U.S. Senate. And in her campaign for governor, state Sen. Barbara Buono’s promising a preschool plan that mirrors de Blasio’s.
All these plans may sound appealing, especially to working parents. But all are unworkable.
Let’s start with Booker’s plan. He has proposed free preschool for every child in America. One problem: There are about 4 million children for every grade level in the current K-12 system. Add two preschool grades at a per-student cost of perhaps $10,000 a year and you’ve got a new $80 billion program
Will the feds pay for it? Not a chance. That’s roughly equal to the entire federal contribution to all K-12 education. And the feds can’t even afford that; they’re running an annual deficit almost 10 times that amount.
Nonetheless, that didn’t stop the man Booker beat in the August Democratic primary from also offering a preschool plan last week. At an appearance in Long Branch, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone called for the feds to fund preschool expansion.
"Too often state budgets, like New Jersey’s, are unable to provide enough funding for high-quality preschool, and I believe that the federal government must step in," the congressman from the 6th District said.
He didn’t say where the feds would get the money, though. Thanks to the sequester currently in effect, the feds can’t even fund current programs. That means that if he and Booker somehow got a federal preschool plan through Congress, Jersey homeowners would end up footing the bill in the form of higher property taxes.
As for Buono’s plan, it also would cause property taxes to skyrocket. Like de Blasio’s plan, Buono’s calls for imposing a so-called "millionaire's tax" on those making more than $500,000 a year.
One problem: New Jersey already imposed a millionaire's tax. That was in 2004 and it brought our top rate to 8.97 percent, one of the highest in the country. Buono voted for it and it’s still in effect.
That tax was supposed to bring property tax relief. But the new revenues were soon eaten up by inflation in education costs.
Let’s assume Buono imposes a new millionaire's tax on top of the old millionaires tax. That might bring in half a billion dollars annually. However, each grade in New Jersey schools costs about $2 billion. Even if preschool were a bit cheaper than K-12, it would still add $3 billion in new costs. Most would have to come out of property taxes.
“Most of us out here are independent, so we pay this out of our own pockets,” said Max Molina of Humble, Texas. As toll increases go, the one that starts today is pretty moderate, at least for most of us: an extra 75 cents on your E-ZPass bill to drive a car across the George Washington Bridge.
But truckers are being asked to dig a lot deeper — deep enough, they say, to cut into or even eliminate their profits. And some say they are now at a crossroads in terms of their willingness to take runs into and through the New York Metropolitan area. It will now cost those who pay cash to cross in the biggest rigs more than $100, and all truckers are being hit for an extra $8 to $12 dollars per trip, even with E-ZPass.