Asm. John Wisniewski Talks Minimum Wage and Property Taxes

Gubernatorial candidate, Asm. John Wisniewski, explains why he sponsored legislation to increase the minimum wage in New Jersey and why he has fought for middle class property tax relief that would require millionaires to “pay their fair share.” He also shares the importance of the Garden State Manufacturing Act that he believes will encourage the creation of jobs in New Jersey.

3/18/17 #102

Excerpt:

"State Assemblyman John Wisniewski is a Democrat running for governor of the great state of New Jersey, Chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee, he is one of many candidates we're interviewing who want to lead this state, because? Because New Jersey needs leadership that's looking out for the middle class, not looking out for the insiders. And the government we've had currently, for the past eight years, has been doing just that. Looking out for the insiders. Define this "insider" thing. I mean you were Chair of the Bernie Sanders campaign against Hillary Clinton. Is that what this is about? No. No. I mean, look, I was honored to support Senator Sanders, cause I thought he would have been a better candidate in the general election. He lost the primary, we supported Secretary Clinton, but in that election defeat, we have to recognize that there is a changed attitude in the electorate. And that they're not looking for party leadership to dictate to them, "Trust me, this is who you should vote for." They want to have the privilege of choosing for themselves, and that's what we see happening in the New Jersey governor's race. So let's go through, Assemblyman, we've known each other a long time, and you were on our previous iteration of this program. Yeah. Capitol Report with my great colleague Rafael Pi Roman, and we talked about a whole range of issues, largely about transportation. We may get to that now, but I want to talk about one of the major issues the governor talked about yesterday. We're taping this on the 1st of March. Except this issue will not be resolved anytime soon. The pension crisis. 40, 50, 60 billion dollars. Sure. The unfunded liability, if you will. Yeah. Public employees who will retire from the state government. Here's the question. If you were governor, how would you solve and address that problem? Well let's... we have to address the problem by looking at how we got to the problem. Because all of the solutions that have been talked about have been trying to capture, in a way that is so small... It took us 20 years to get to the point where our pension system is in crisis. In 1996 it was a 100 percent funded. Now it's not. And so it's going to take us a long time to get to that point where we could get back to having a fully funded pension system, which most actuaries say is 70 to 80 percent, not 100 percent. This governor has been overstating the problem, and underestimating the period of time to solve it..."