Craft your own New Jersey state budget

There is a cool tool on NJSpotlight.com that lets you play legislator and decide what does and doesn’t go in the state budget. Check it out here.

You have to make decisions on revenues and expenditures and while the choices aren’t all encompassing, they give you a good feel about the decisions that go into crafting a $40 billion budget. Should you legalize and tax marijuana? Make community college free? Keep in mind that in New Jersey the budget has to balance, so if you include your pet projects you will have to make cuts elsewhere.

You can raise the sales tax or eliminate the inheritance tax, you can raise the millionaires’ tax, but it in the end, expenditures have to equal revenues.

Play around with it and see if you can include everything you want and still balance the budget.

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