Lonegan's Leadership

Steve Lonegan, Executive Director of Americans for Prosperity-NJ is doing an amazing job in organizing grass roots opposition to the wasteful ways of Trenton.

Lonegan's successful efforts to defeat the stem cell and sales/property tax scams on the ballot last month have been well publicised. Not one to rest on his laurels, Lonegan and his citizen activists are hard at work to defeat a new tax and entitlement program that the unions and liberals of both parties are hoping to sneak through during the lame duck session---Paid Family Leave.

Here is a message I received from Lonegan last evening:

Turning Up The Heat

Within hours of posting our alert, over 600 of you sent email to your legislators - with more coming in. This is an amazing response - and
true show of how energized our base is. In fact, Assemblyman DeCroce's office told us that he is receiving as many emails from our
activists as he is from the Teacher's Union and AFL-CIO members. Now that's impressive!

So here's what we want to do now - turn up the heat.

Over the weekend, we want you to fill up the voice mail boxes of the Assembly members on the Labor Committee who support paid family leave.
Tell them this legislation will lead to abuse, put even more burden on those who work, and lead to higher taxes for all.

Please call these legislators and leave messages on their voice mail. We want them to come into their office on Monday and understand the
hard working citizens of New Jersey don't want to support yet another government program.

Assembly Labor Committee

The following committee members have indicated that they support paid family leave and need to hear from you:

Name District Phone Number
Egan, Joseph V. - Chair (732) 249-4550
Van Drew, Jeff - Vice-Chair (609) 465-0700 (Cape May Court House office)
(609) 926-3779 (Somers Point office)
(856) 293-8353 (Millville office)
(856) 696-7109 (Vineland office)
Cohen, Neil M. (908) 624-0880
Oliver, Sheila Y. (973) 395-1166
Scalera, Frederick (973) 667-4431

Assemblymen Doherty and Gregg have indicated that they will vote against this bill. Please call to thank them and encourage them to
hold the line.

Doherty, Michael J. (908) 835-0552
Gregg, Guy R. (973) 584-5422

Some Talking Points:

The bill is slated to be posted by the Assembly Labor Committee on December 6th and be voted on as soon as December 13th.

We need to stop this new tax raising scheme

In a nutshell, passage of the Paid Family Leave Bill means:

Increased taxes
A new government entitlement program
It pays people to take off ten weeks a year because they feel they need the time off

The Paid Family Leave Bill is a fraud on two fronts - financial and philosophical. The financial fraud is the claim that a .01% payroll tax will fund ten weeks a year off costing $5,200.00. This benefit would require 80 workers earning an average of $60,000 to support only one entitlement package.

The Disability Trust Fund, the mechanism being proposed to fund this scheme, has already been raided this year to the tune of $75 million
to balance the state's bloated budget. The bill's proponents deliberately refuse to consider the deadbeats and sluggards who will scam this program for every dime they can get.

This grossly under estimated cost destines Paid Family Leave to join the ranks of the state's pension and benefits programs with massive unfunded liabilities.

While single moms are the foil for the program, supporters say that any worker can take ten weeks off if they claim some "family member" needs their "psychological comfort." But it doesn't stop there. The law allows anyone to claim ten weeks for any reason at all -- as long as it is related to some "family emergency", which can be almost anything.

I'm supporting Lonegan's effort to defeat this wasteful program. I encourage you to do the same.

Update:

Chairman Egan's voice mailbox is full. Leave a message in a staff members box and ask that it be passed on to him

Vice Chairman Van Drew's reception system does not offer an option to leave him a message. I left a message with on his chief of staff's voice mail. I encourage you to do the same.