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[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

We are honored to have the Honorable Speaker of the House, the Speaker of the Assembly, Craig Coughlin with us.

Speaker Coughlin, great to see you.

- Nice to see you, Steve.

Thanks for having me back.

- Your candid opinion about New Jersey's fiscal health in 2025, is?

- We're in good shape.

I mean, we have work to do, but overall, we're paying our bills.

You know, making full pension payments, something that hasn't, year after year after year, which hasn't been done in decades.

We've contributed more to school funding than ever before.

We still have a healthy surplus to make sure we can help weather some storms.

And we're focused and continue to have the kind of relief for New Jersey taxpayers that we have been striving for.

For now, there's $4.3 billion in the budget for property tax cuts, in terms of ANCHOR, in terms of Freeze, and the new program, Stay NJ, which I think is gonna be a transformative.

- There's money for that, Mr. Speaker?

- Yeah, it's in there.

- There's money to pay for that?

- There's money to pay for that.

- Well, let me ask you this.

With all the uncertainty in the federal government, and again, this is the end of March, we don't know what's really gonna happen, how concerned are you about federal cuts to state governments like New Jersey, who ultimately serve communities and people in the state?

Frankly, how can you be that confident knowing all the uncertainty going on in DC?

- You asked me, the question was, what is the state of New Jersey's finances?

And I said that we're sewer sound.

You know, we have some challenges.

We have a structural deficit, but we're gonna work on that.

You know, we have done things like cut costs before last year.

Relatively unnoticed.

We cut about $400 million out of the budget once the legislature had it, basically paid for things we added back in, but I'm incredibly concerned about what's gonna happen at the federal government level.

Right?

2.2 million people take advantage of Medicaid in the state of New Jersey.

A huge cut to that would be devastating.

Education funding.

We know that the Department of Education is being dismantled.

- That's right.

- And what about everyone whose children and the students who have their dreams tied to things like Pell Grants, how's that gonna work?

What about special needs kids?

You know, much of that money comes from the federal government.

And so, you know, those kind of things.

And personally, as you know, Steve, I've made the cornerstone of my speakership the fight against food insecurity.

- That's right.

- So if we're gonna talk about SNAP cuts, then again, those are things that are gonna be really detrimental and candidly that they're just bad.

They're wrong, they're not bad policy.

They're just morally wrong - To what degree do you think, Speaker Coughlin, most people understand the real impact on people's lives of they're cutting this, they're cutting the fat and the federal government, they're getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse.

And there is, the waste fraud and abuse.

Abuse is there, but to what extent do you think people understand that real lives are at stake here?

- Well, I think everybody understands it a little bit.

And then everybody understands this a lot when it comes home to roost.

Look, I said to you, we cut roughly $400 million outta the budget last year.

I'm not opposed to cutting government spending, having a surgical approach to eliminating things that are duplicative or unnecessary.

That's all good and fine.

But that's not what we've seen in Washington, right?

I mean, we had literally had Elon Musk walking around with a chainsaw that signified he was just gonna cut the hell out of.

That's not the approach I would take and that's not, I think is what's good.

So do people understand that?

Yes they do.

When at some point for all of us, things are abstract, right?

They're like, "Hey, okay, they're gonna cut money, but good, great."

You know what I mean?

But when the now comes and their daughter who's gonna be a doctor, doesn't have a Pell Grant, has struggles to try to figure out how she's gonna get to the next semester of school.

When your father or your grandfather no longer has the Medicaid benefits they need, when your next door neighbor's kid is food insufficient, you figure it out, because they're, you know, hanging around your house and you're making sure that they get something to eat.

In those cases it becomes really real, and that's what I worry about.

- You know, when we talk about government layoffs, right?

And look, Governor Murphy has, there's 6,000 less people under than when Governor Murphy started.

Okay, so it's not about the notion of being opposed to reducing workforce and cutting spending.

Those are things that I embrace when they're right and when they're good.

But when you just lay off a whole class of people and that's when it comes home.

You know what I mean?

Because so many New Jerseyans are just one or two paychecks away from going from food donors to food recipients from pantries and things like that.

And I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but it's true.

Right?

And with the cost still going, you know, inflation has come, it's now leveled off, but frankly, it was leveled off by the way, it was leveled off on election day in 2024.

But so with all of those things, added cost, losing your job, that can be a real hardship for people.

Quick question on childcare.

We have an initiative that we're involved in that talks about the importance of access to affordable quality childcare.

The graphic is up for first 1000 days policy coalition.

Here's the question.

With the new governor, there'll be a new governor in January, 2026, Where does the importance of childcare fit into your agenda, Mr. Speaker?

- Well, it's critically important, right?

It is particularly important for young families.

We've invested in it.

There's money in the budget for it.

But I can tell you how important it is because I now have two precious grandchildren, right?

They're about two years old.

My wife cares for them a couple of days a week.

And then they have, you know, somebody else who cares for 'em the other days.

All of my children and their spouse's work.

Their family life would be different if they had to pay for five day a week childcare.

It's expensive.

It's really expensive.

And, you know, on some level you understand that because you want our most precious assets to be in a place that is the best it could possibly be.

But having childcare and letting parents be able to fulfill their dreams and careers to let them be successful, which helps us all.

By the way, we are all better off when everyone is successful.

If every New Jerseyan could achieve the best that they're capable of, we'd all be really better off.

So childcare matters an awful lot.

- The Speaker of the Assembly, Craig Coughlin, joining us once again to talk about some critical issues and the Speaker will be back with us in a few months, giving us an update, not just on the budget, but a whole range of other issues as the entire state assembly is up for election in November, 2025, as there'll be an election for governor in November, 2025.

Mr. Speaker, thank you so much.

- Thanks for having me, Steve.

Appreciate it.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To see more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato programs, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We are joined once again by Amy Torres, Executive Director of New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.

Amy, good to see you again.

- Thank you so much for having me, Steve.

- You got it.

Listen, it's a moving target.

We are taping on the 18th of March, it'll be seen later.

How serious is the immigration crisis in the state and nation, A, and B, why does Newark, New Jersey seem to be at the epicenter of this situation?

- Yeah, I mean, let's talk about the state of immigration nationally, and we've seen a lot of the cases happening here in New Jersey, too.

I mean, first, we have a doctor from Brown University who was deported despite a court order.

We have an electrical engineer from Germany who has a green card who was interrogated so harshly that he was hospitalized.

We have a woman who married a Trump supporter, and when she and her husband were coming back from their honeymoon in Puerto Rico, you know, not, not outside the bounds of US border enforcement.

This isn't a foreign country, it's a US territory.

But upon coming back from their honeymoon, was detained by ICE.

A 10-year-old brain cancer patient who was a US citizen, a US citizen in Chicago, who was detained and handcuffed for over 10 hours.

So the state of immigration is actually not really focusing on who the president said he would be going after.

He said that there's this whole hoard and this entire criminal network, despite overwhelming evidence that immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than native born US citizens.

But if this is the whole mass that he claimed to exist, why are green card holders being interrogated to the point at which they're hospitalized?

Why are US citizens being detained?

And why are people who are electrical engineers and doctors facing threats of deportation?

So I think if you're still thinking about this as an immigration issue, that needs to stop.

This is really an authoritarian regime issue.

We're using these major weaponization of police and ICE officers to violate people's civil liberties.

- But Amy, at the same time, every poll I've looked at, and you look at the same polls.

You live this every day.

A significant number of New Jerseyans and Americans believe that the immigration, illegal immigration issue needs to be addressed.

How the heck do we find balance between fighting against the things that you just said, acknowledging those things are wrong, but at the same time deporting those who are not in this country legally, which most people support?

- Well, I think most people support that because for years upon end, we've been questioning the legitimacy of people's presence here.

I mean, this stretches all the way back toward questioning whether President Barack Obama was actually a US citizen or not.

And if you hear that year upon year, cycle after cycle, of course you get brainwashed to the point that you believe this imaginary thing.

- But Amy, respectfully, there is a problem.

There is a problem.

Are you saying you don't acknowledge that there is a problem with illegal immigration?

It's a question of- - I totally acknowledge that.

- Whether it's hyperbole, or people exaggerate it, or the media focuses on it, and politicians take advantage of it, say that's all true.

But you acknowledge there is a problem with illegal immigration that has to be addressed from a policy point of view?

- I absolutely agree that the immigration system is fundamentally broken.

That you are more likely to interact with the immigration system and be set up to fail and lose status just as the family that we had here in Haddon Township, New Jersey, right?

They've done everything right.

The system failed them.

The mother ended up in detention, the father- - I saw that, by the way, check out NJ Spotlight News.

There's a great story about that.

And also it's a national news story.

That entire community, Amy, came together to support that mother of a business, right?

The son was speaking on behalf of the family, the entire community, and the vast majority are American born citizens who were saying this is wrong.

That's not what most Americans support.

Is that fair to say, Amy?

What's going on right now is not what most Americans support.

- Most American support are so divorced from the everyday issue, they're so far away from understanding the conditions that their neighbors face, that they are reacting to this larger apparatus of media that's telling them, oh, every immigrant that exists- - There's gang members from Venezuela.

You gotta get rid of them.

- Right, exactly.

Luis Rivera, he has a Michael Jordan and Air Jordan tattoo.

Send him to Guantanamo Bay.

That's what they're saying, if you look- - What did they think the tattoo was?

- Ask an ICE officer.

I mean, I'm sure you know this is part of the same thing where you look a certain way, you have a certain accent, you have a big scary tattoo, happens to be an Air Jordan tattoo.

But that was enough for ICE officers to say that he had gang affiliation and he was one of the first people sent to Guantanamo Bay.

So I hear you, Steve.

I know what the public opinion is.

I also know that there has been a multi-year strategy to delude the public into thinking this way, despite when you talk to everyday New Jerseyans, when you talk to long-term residents of this country, they will tell you the system is designed to make them fall out of status.

- And what is the Immigrant Trust Act, and why is it so important?

- The Immigrant Trust Act takes some laws and protections that we already have in New Jersey and codifies them into law so that whatever should happen in the next governorship, whatever should happen years down the road, New Jersey is very clear that when it comes to interacting with the federal government, we're going to ask for our constitutional rights first.

What the Immigrant Trust Act says is that if you work for the state of New Jersey, and if an ICE officer asks you to hand over information about someone, that you first ask, do you have a judicial warrant with this person's name clearly and correctly spelled?

If they do, you are required by federal law to work with them.

If they don't, the state of New Jersey has the right, every person has this right to say, "Without a judicial warrant, I'm not going to comply."

All the Immigrant Trust Act does is clarify that this is the script that state agencies should use if ICE officers ever come asking for health enrollment information or for after school information, or for anything else that people in New Jersey may go to the state to seek services for.

- Amy, got a minute left.

Delaney Hall in Newark, a thousand bed privately operated facility.

It's a new detention center for those who are apprehended by ICE and are going there.

Why is that an issue?

- Well, look, we have, as of Friday, we have a historic ICE and CBP budget, nearly $10 billion, 10 billion with a B.

- What was that acronym for what?

- For ICE and Customs and Border Patrol, Immigration Customs Enforcement.

And so $10 billion, that's all of your Medicaid dollars that have been stripped away, Medicare, social Security, every government service that has been cut has now been put into immigration enforcement.

Not only that, it's being funneled into private prison corporations.

Geo Group, who owns and will operate Delaney Hall, was the first corporation to max out their campaign contributions to Donald Trump's reelection campaign.

So Delaney Hall is terrible for all of the reasons that we've discussed.

Lack of due process, profiling, and surveillance.

But this is yet another example of the billionaire class profiting off of this administration.

The net profit of Delaney Hall is going to bring in an additional billion dollars for Geo Group, and its sister companies like Core Civics stand to benefit just as much as well.

So we see these mega corporations profiting off of our civil liberties being trampled in the name of national security and safety, - Amy Torres is Executive Director of New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.

And also know that we have other folks with different points of view, particularly Republican legislators and others who will be joining us today in our taping.

They may see it differently, but you should check out the facts, folks, and check out the website of Amy's organization, New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice.

Amy, thank you once again for joining us.

We'll continue the conversation, I promise.

- Thank you.

Bye-bye.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To see more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato programs, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We're now joined by Dr. Hector Lozada-Vega, who is the director of the Institute for International Business at Seton Hall University, Stillman School of Business.

Seton Hall, one of our higher ed partners.

Doctor, good to see you.

- Good seeing you.

- Let me ask you what I think is a simple question, but it may not have a simple answer.

What the heck is a tariff?

- A tariff simply put is a tax.

It's a tax that we impose on imported goods.

So that's the simplest way to look at it.

- Who pays the tax?

- Ah, fantastic question.

The tax is paid by whoever imports the product, and it usually is passed along on the price of the item to the consumer.

So ultimately, you can say that the consumer pays the tax.

- Okay, President Trump has said for a long time, and he is not the only one that Mexico, China, Canada, that the trade relationship is off, that the US is getting screwed, and we need to address it.

Quote, we need to hold them accountable for their promises of halting illegal immigration, stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs going into our country.

So now trade is connected to these other issues.

Is that the norm, Professor?

- Not even close.

I think it's an interesting way of looking at trade policy to look at immigration policy and health policy.

I don't think it's necessarily the most effective way to look at it, but I will give you a positive.

On the Trump side, he is using it as a negotiating tool and as a negotiating tool, it may be opening up the door for negotiating and other aspects.

- So what's wrong with that?

What about if the president says, I'm not really, if he doesn't say publicly, look, I'm not really gonna do it to this degree, but I gotta bring 'em to the table, I gotta make 'em sweat, and I gotta hold something over their heads.

What's wrong with that?

- What's wrong is that Canada and Mexico are our friends, and we don't necessarily treat our friends that way.

It's kind of like a hostile way to approach the subject.

If you had a problem with fentanyl, for example, we could have set that aside and have a direct conversation with the Canadian government and the Mexican government on how to curb the flow of fentanyl into the United States and leave trade for another time.

In 2017, the Trump administration renegotiated the NAFTA agreement and it moved it into a positive area where all three countries were benefiting, and now we are basically reneging on that agreement on behalf of.

- Now, hold on.

Professor, doctor, are you saying that the current trade policy in the United States with Canada, Mexico, and China was in fact negotiated through the previous Trump administration?

- Correct, well, with China to one extent because Biden actually followed through with some of the same Trump regulations.

- But with Canada and Mexico, that's the Trump policy.

- Canada and Mexico, that was the original NAFTA agreement that was negotiated by Bush number one, and passed into law by President Clinton, that needed to be reviewed, and it was finally reviewed by the Trump administration, and made some significant corrections and concessions, and now we are basically reneging on that agreement.

- Doctor, are we in a trade war?

A, and if we're in a trade war, what does that really mean and how does it end?

- I'm not sure we are all in, but we are at the beginning of a potential trade war.

For New Jersey, I can tell you it will mean an estimated $5 billion in an effective increase in collection of monies from consumers.

So that's 5 billion with a B as in boy.

- On what kind of products?

Are we talking cars?

- Oh, cars and steel would be the first thing that will be imposed.

But what people forget is that- - Phones take a hit?

- Of course, all those electronics will take a hit, but most importantly is food, food stuffs.

All of the everyday items that we consume.

About 72% of all the produce and fruit that we consume in the United States comes from Mexico.

All that is gonna be taxed, and that increases anywhere from 2% to 4.5%.

- Respectfully, professor, the president has said that there'll be a minor disturbance for long term gain.

He's playing the long game, he said.

- The problem is that in the short term, especially, this is a reversive, a regressive tax, and the people who depend the most on access to some of these everyday items, are the ones who are gonna be paying the most into it.

And long-term, I don't know Steve, about a hundred years ago, President Hoover tried this with the Smoot-Hawley tax.

- Yeah, let folks know.

It was in 1930 the Smoot-Hawley tariffs.

- Correct.

- Smoot-Hawley tariffs and by the way, named after two members of Congress.

What the heck does that have to do with 2025?

- Well, because we have the history that a hundred years ago that ended up making the Great Depression even greater than it would have been.

So it engaged the nations of the world in a trade war just before they all participated in World War II, but by the time the Smoot-Hawley Act was repealed in 1934, the economy of the United States was really in shambles and that actually cost Herbert Hoover the election to FDR.

- But you gotta believe the president and his economic advisors understand that and wouldn't want that to happen.

- We would hope that that would be the case.

- That's not good politically, it's not good policy-wise, it's not good for the country.

He wouldn't want that.

- Ah, let's assume that that is true.

Then I hopefully believe that that will not be true and that we're never gonna get there because again, history has a tendency to repeat itself when we repeat the same patterns, and I don't think it would be good for anyone.

I don't think it would be good for President Trump either.

- What do you think the odds are?

Not that you're a political prognosticator, we won't have you on for that.

You understand economics and international affairs better than most.

To what extent do you believe that if prices can go up and people feel it, that the president is likely to say, I'm gonna back down on this?

- I think that there would be a very high likelihood because remember that he promised that he was gonna bring the price of eggs down and consumer expenditures down too because it was too, it was too much.

According to him, the Biden administration has left inflation way too high.

We are right now at the same levels where the Biden administration was or left it.

So people are speaking up and people who go to the grocery stores and cannot find eggs, for example, are starting to speak up.

When the price of fruit and vegetables start going up, then that causes a lot of disturbance.

And I think President Trump is a political animal and he will realize that, and he may change the course accordingly.

- Doctor, we'll have you back on again and monitor the trade tariff situation.

Thank you so much, doctor.

- Anytime, my pleasure.

- Dr. Hector Logada Vega.

Thank you, doctor.

I'm Steve Adubato.

Important conversation about tariffs because it affects all of us.

See you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by RWJBarnabas Health.

Let’s be healthy together.

IBEW Local 102.

The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Operating Engineers, Local 825.

New Brunswick Development Corporation.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

NJM Insurance Group.

United Airlines.

The New Jersey Education Association.

And by these public spirited organizations, individuals and associations committed to informing New Jersey citizens about the important issues facing the Garden State.

Promotional support provided by ROI-NJ.

And by The New Jersey Business & Industry Association.

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