Spadea: Will NJ Republicans fight the proposed gas tax hike?

It's time for round three in the battle of the proposed gas tax hike in NJ!

On a Friday night, our New Jersey legislators are trying to sneak one past us by agreeing on a 23-cents per gallon gas tax hike. The plan is to hike the gas tax in exchange for an eventual less than 1 percent break on the sales tax — a break that the Democrats could easily undo as soon as Christie’s out of office. Hiding it under the guise of "tax fairness," with a "gradual" drop in sales tax from 7 percent to 6.875 percent on Jan 1, 2017 and then to 6.625 on Jan 1, 2018.

The problem is, it’s not “fair” at all. A New Jersey resident would have to spend anywhere from approximately $80-90,000 a year to see any balance with the gas tax hike. The $1.5 billion in taxpayer savings may well be eaten up with a higher cost of goods resulting from the enormous gas tax hike.

Republican state Sen. Steve Oroho tried — and failed — to convince me it’s a good way to push costs for our broke Transportation Trust Fund to out-of-state drivers, to make them pay for the roads. But Oroho didn’t take into account, or just plain ignored, the huge impact it would have on hardworking New Jersey drivers whose other taxes are already spiraling out of control.

It's a lie, it's a scam and it needs to be stopped, now!

Last time our legislators tried this stunt, the governor ripped into me as I went on a month-long crusade, taking calls from all over the state from listeners who will said they will only be hurt by this deal and that it would have a devastating effect on their commuting budgets.

The question here is, are there ANY Republicans brave enough to stop this? Or will this just be another burden that gets thrown onto the back of NJ's hard-working residents?

Join me on Twitter in the fight against it. Use hashtag #nogastax and tag me @billspadea and New Jersey 101.5 @nj1015.