Kyrillos: New Jerseys Endangered Prosperity
Report Warns of Economic Misfortune Could Follow Five Years of Misguided Policies

Senator Joe Kyrillos, (R-13), made the following remarks in response to “New Jersey New Economy Growth Challenges,� a report by James Hughes and Joseph Seneca of Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy that warns New Jersey’s economic foundation is eroding:
“This bleak report should send a chill down the spine of everybody in New Jersey. It is a wake up call for New Jersey policy makers. Drs. Hughes and Seneca have starkly laid out the task confronting us: fundamentally changing our states economic policies or New Jerseys prosperity will wither. The past five years of anti-business policies have been bad for New Jersey’s economy and its residents. According to the report, between 2000 to 2005, New Jersey lost 117,600 high-paying business services and manufacturing jobs and replaced them with 113,200 low-paying service jobs.
New Jersey was recently judged to have the nation’s second worse business climate. That burden is especially felt by small business owners whose companies create the lion’s share of new high-wage jobs. Not only has New Jersey been chasing jobs away, it has also become an inhospitable place for high-net worth individuals to live. This has real budgetary consequences. The top one percent of income earners pay 42 percent of the state’s income taxes, increasingly this mobile group is choosing to live outside of New Jersey. The shirking number of high-wage jobs and the flight of the affluent make it more difficult to solve the structural budget deficit.
It is not enough for the governor to talk about a new economic policy there must be real action. The stakes could not be higher. We are not only competing with other states to bring jobs to New Jersey, but with the global economy there is now international competition for jobs. This is a race New Jersey cannot afford to lose.�