The N.J. Chamber of Commerce thanks the governor and legislative leaders for crafting a budget that invests in the state’s infrastructure, and its education, job training and workforce development programs.

We are glad to see that the budget provides assistance to utility companies, landlords, and the child care industry; and it makes payments that will reduce the state’s overall debt and future costs associated with debt.

We also welcome news that the budget does not call for burdensome new taxes on the business community. The N.J. Chamber believes tax relief should be part of each year’s budget, not just election year ones.

However, this budget does not begin to ignite the economic recovery that is vital to our state this year.

There are still thousands of struggling businesses in New Jersey, and they are going to need help on a much larger scale than the existing NJEDA relief programs and the $235 million relief package for small business that the governor signed into law on June 22.

Since the start of the pandemic, the state has provided $600 million in grants from the Economic Development Authority, and businesses in New Jersey have received $26 billion in U.S. SBA Paycheck Protection Program loans. Even with that help, we lost between 30 percent and 40 percent of our small businesses and about a third of our restaurants. There is an enormous need for additional working capital. Without it, more of our businesses will close.

We urge state leaders to immediately release more of the billions of dollars that New Jersey received from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) to help our businesses.

The ARP funds were earmarked to battle the COVID-19 health crisis and support an economic recovery. With the COVID-19 health crisis abating, it is time to use the ARP funds to make substantive, strategic investments in our economic recovery by infusing capital into our cash-starved businesses; funding back-to-work bonuses to help alleviate the current worker shortage; and replenishing the state’s Unemployment Insurance Fund to take that tax burden off the back of the business community.

We need our state leaders to do this with the same speed and urgency with which they passed the fiscal year 2022 budget.

By doing so, they will help more businesses get back on their feet and save thousands of jobs. To do any less will put New Jersey behind the many states already making these strategic investments.

The ARP provides us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put New Jersey’s economy back on the right track and on a long-term growth trajectory that will make New Jersey more competitive, and benefit all of its citizens for years to come.