Murphy wants to give your money to low-income babies in 2021

Taking a page from Cory Booker’s socialist agenda, Gov. Phil Murphy’s newest brainchild is a New Jersey “Baby Bonds” program, which would purchase a $1,000 savings bond for every lower-income baby born in this state next year.

Mind you, he’s not generously digging into his very deep pockets to do it. Ge’s planning to borrow money to do it. While the quintessential "good guy," Cory Booker, proposed a similar bill at the federal level, Murphy’s ploy would borrow $80 million on the back of New Jersey taxpayers in order to deposit $1,000 into accounts of all babies born to lower-income families in 2021.

The upper limit for being considered lower-income for this program would be a family who makes $131,000 a year or less. Even if we weren’t going through some of the most challenging financial times the state has ever seen, this is a bad idea. But during a period of time where we’ve seen the governor raise taxes and look to borrow billions, while simultaneously killing the economy, calling this a bad idea is a severe understatement.

According to an article on NewJerseyGlobe.com, Republican State Chairman Doug Steinhardt argues that this is extremely poor timing for an expenditure like this. He says, “If the governor wants to address the wealth gap, he should start by making New Jersey affordable for those who live and work here now.”

Amen.

Even though Murphy’s plan is only one payment of $1,000 per child, (which is automatically invested) and Booker’s would require additional schedules payments on a into a child’s account, what the governor is trying to do would cost almost $16 billion to fully fund. I’m never a fan of giving away the government’s money irresponsibly (there’s actually no such thing — it’s YOUR money.) But borrowing more and more money right now to do anything other than fix the problems Murphy has created during the COVID-19 shutdown is a slap in the face to all New Jerseyans.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Judi Franco. Any opinions expressed are Judi's own.