OpEd: NJ Leaders Must Unveil Economic Recovery Plan Before It’s Too Late

By Joshua A Sotomayor-Einstein

The Chinese government must be held accountable for the Covid-19 disinformation campaign it has waged against the world. This propaganda operation has ground the global economy to an almost full stop and contributed to the death of tens of thousands. Few places have not felt the impact of the misinformation and purposely incomplete data the Chinese Communist dictatorship released after the pandemic began in its borders. Whether the chatter in global intelligence circles that Covid-19 was engineered pans out or not, we must always bear in mind that this a regime which holds a million Uighar Muslims in concentration camps, arrests Christians and followers of Falun Gong regularly for freely exercising faith, and which not so many months ago, was facing massive protests by Hong Kongers objecting to the erosion of their freedoms enjoyed nowhere else in the Chinese dictatorship. Bottom line, the Chinese Communist dictatorship lied and people around the world died.

Due to Covid-19, the world, America, and we in New Jersey are feeling the pain of loved ones lost and of an uncertain economic future. While the current projections show his estimate (published in an oped in Save Jersey)of 240,000 American deathsis thankfully wrong, Doug Steinhardt, Chairman of the New Jersey Republican State Committee, is right in that we must go after the Chinese Communist dictatorship. But his proposal, advocating New Jersey’s overwhelmingly far left Congressional delegation push for legislation to lift the sovereign immunity of the People’s Republic of Chinacan only go so far.

While we must cease to see the Chinese dictatorship as a friend and begin to engage it as it is – an Orwellian government hostile both to its own people and to the world; we in New Jersey, and our leaders in both parties, must focus on rebuilding New Jersey. The same Democrat Congressional delegation which stopped a Covid-19 aid bill for small businesses but have pressured the Trump administration to let the International Monetary Fund give 5 billion dollars in aid to the Iranian dictatorship, despite Iranian efforts to murder Americans since the 1980’s, will likely be uninclined to hold the Chinese dictatorship responsible for their efforts to harm Americans. Yet regardless of whether Congressional Democrats decide to put country over politics and work with President Trump or not, we in New Jersey must not only hold China accountable but must also hold Governor Murphy and the legislature in Trenton responsible for their failing to plan for the day after the medical crisis ends and the economic one begins.

New Jersey Republicans, Independents, and Democrats, native born and new Americans, woman and men – New Jersyans of all types, must come together to demand a plan. We must demand a plan for the day after the Covid-19 crisis passes. A plan that we, stuck in our homes, many of us unfortunately unemployed or furloughed, all of us nervous over physical and fiscal health, can look over now, not when it is too late and all the businesses forced to close due to Covid-19 quarantine orders are closed for good. We must have a plan now, not when the number of unemployed New Jerseyans rises from hundreds of thousands to millions, but now, before we hit the peak of the second crisis – the economic one, the only one for which the Governor’s office and the political leaders in Trenton have had the time to plan for and as of yet have not.

That many in the state capital, Trenton, are involved in the logistics both of getting vital life-saving equipment to our brave heroes on the front lines – nurses, doctors, and emts; or are engaged in the yeoman’s work of encouraging social distancing is of no doubt. But the reality is that there is no conceivable way all 120 members of the state legislature and their hundreds of staffers, the hundreds of official and unofficial political appointees of Governor Phil Murphy, or the leadership of both the State Democrat and Republican Party’s, are all occupied in those endeavors. Most are at home obeying quarantine rules and have the time to make a plan to rebuild New Jersey’s economy the day after Covid-19.

New Jersey requires real leadership to prepare for after the Covid-19 medical crisis ends. This leadership does not mean merely handing out a stingy few coins of people’s tax dollars, with strings attached, back to them like a machine politician run Thanksgiving Turkey give away, filling the belly of supporters but failing to address the common underlying issues facing all. It means substantive systemic reform to put New Jerseyans on the path to an economic and fiscal future better than the path New Jersey was on before the virus came out of Communist China. While it is the role of the federal government to lead the charge against the Chinese Communist dictatorship so that it is held accountable for its efforts to undermine the global health and economy, it is the responsibility of all New Jerseyans to hold Governor Murphy and all in Trenton accountable for our economic future the day after Covid-19.

Joshua A. Sotomayor-Einstein, of Hoboken, is the New Jersey Republican State Committeeman from Hudson County.