Frelinghuysen: A Failure of Leadership for New Jersey Taxpayers

A bill that will increase taxes for many – though not the wealthiest District 11 taxpayers –  could pass in a matter of days. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen could have lobbied to change the House tax bill’s most harmful provisions. Instead, he was the only N.J. Congressman to remain silent. He voted ‘no’ only after Republican leaders determined they didn’t need his vote.

• The best chance to stop this tax bill was when the House voted on a budget resolution in October. The bill included many of the worst parts of the final version, and yet Rodney was the only N.J. representative to vote for it. This bill passed by an extremely thin margin; if only two more representatives had voted NO, the resolution would have failed.
• He was silent on the provisions that in his words “could do much damage to the business climate in our state, a trend we must never tolerate, let alone encourage. … I simply could not support the legislation due to very negative impacts it would have on so many of my fellow New Jerseyans.” If that’s how he really felt, why was he the only member of the NJ delegation to allow this bill to pass through budget resolution, where he had the power to stop it?  And why did we have to wait until after the bill passed to state the obvious?