New Jersey lawmakers are on the verge of approving the state's largest spending bill in history and without a contentious budget battle after striking a deal with Governor Murphy on the new state NJ senior property tax plan Democratic leaders in the Senate and assembly buttoned up the rest of the 2024 budget document with GOP support to boot but the formal vote still needs to happen before July 1st in order to avoid a government shutdown until the spending plan is approved and tension is growing among the Republican ranks GOP lawmakers say they're frustrated with a lack of transparency in the process from Democrats giving them just hours to digest hundreds of pages detailing more than 53 billion dollars in spending before they take a vote senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan is at the state house with the latest Brenda hi Brianna it's been a hurry up and wait kind of day here at the State House both the assembly and the Senate budget committees are scheduled to vote on the legislature's proposed state spending plan now Democrats control both the legislature and the governor's office and at this point we don't expect to see a whole lot of drama budget committees convened hours late today and started Business Without a budget document it's taking a long time for the office of legislative services to compose the budget bill but that's not unusual we're talking a document that can run two to three hundred pages and it takes a while this is how the senate committee chair addressed it it is Our intention here today um to vote out a budget Bill Governor Murphy unveiled a 53.1 billion dollar spending plan back in February and many of the items he proposed should remain true in this document we expect no new taxes and we also expect this spending plan will fully fund State Pension obligations the legislature's proposed budget will probably increase state aid to education separate bills up for consideration include doubling New Jersey's child tax credit up to a thousand dollars per eligible child which passed the committee other measures also expand eligibility and access for two senior prescription drug programs now let's talk tax cuts next year's anchor property tax rebate program adds an extra 250 dollars for homeowners and renters over age 65. that's money they can actually count on and the Senate budget committee added it to a bill for a new program called stay and J that's for seniors who earn less than a half million dollars a year they'd get a property tax credit of up to sixty five hundred dollars and there's money for renters too but stay NJ doesn't kick in until 2026 three years from now and that bothered Republicans this bill as currently written won't provide any relief to anybody until 2026 it may as well be 2046 from a uh predicting where we'll be fiscally at that point and we've already seen erosion in our revenues uh so the it's very likely that just as in past schemes like this it will be the very first thing on the chopping block this bill state New Jersey is essentially like Wimpy from Popeye I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today Senator oscanlin had pointed out that with this record Surplus over 10 billion dollars that we have in our coffers ready and willing to be able to provide relief to taxpayers in 2024 however Republicans all voted for the bill which passed unanimously because who votes against a tax cut in the legislative election year and they are all up for re-election the committee voted on several pages of bills as this regular legislative session winds down Republicans remain very unhappy about what they perceive as a lack of transparency that they won't have any time to read this proposed budget before voting on it the budget document is expected to appear sometime this evening we hope the assembly and Senate committees are both expected to approve the document and then it goes to the full legislature for a vote on Friday which is the budget deadline at the State House in Trenton I'm Brenda Flanagan [Music] [Music]