Gov. Phil Murphy signed an executive order today directing New Jersey’s state agencies to review the One Big Beautiful Bill, the enormous Republican legislative package signed into law by President Donald Trump earlier this month, and report on both the bill’s potential impacts for New Jersey and on ways the state can ameliorate its effects.
In a statement and in the order itself, Murphy made it clear what he believes the outcome of the bill will be: devastating impacts for New Jersey’s budget, social services, and more.
“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a fiscal disaster that fails to deliver for working-class families in New Jersey and across the country,” Murphy said. “This law rips away health care from vulnerable children and families, guts food assistance, and raises costs for everyday Americans. By signing this Executive Order, we are mobilizing to mitigate harm to New Jerseyans and planning to navigate new red tape from Washington, D.C.”
Some state agencies have already publicized their own evaluations of the bill’s effects. Shortly after the bill passed the House, the state Department of Human Services released a statement predicting that Medicaid cuts would lead to 350,000 eligible New Jerseyans losing NJ FamilyCare coverage (New Jersey’s local name for Medicaid), and that new food stamp rules and cost-sharing requirements could blow a hole in the state budget as big as $300 million.
Murphy’s executive order also spells out other ways the governor believes the bill will have deleterious impacts on New Jersey, like its expansion of the federal deficit and its cancellation of a number of clean energy tax credits and programs that New Jersey’s green transition had been relying on. Many of the furthest-reaching provisions, though, won’t kick in for years, which the order argues was done for political reasons and makes the bill a “time bomb” for state budgets.
“Because many of the most harmful and unpopular provisions in this law will not take effect immediately, much of the pain that the OBBBA will inflict on the American people will not be felt until after the next re-election campaigns of the politicians who voted for it,” the order states.
Indeed, the bill is already set to be a major issue in next year’s congressional midterm elections. When the bill first passed the House in May, Murphy released a statement specifically condemning Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield), who represents a highly competitive district that Democrats are hoping to flip.
And Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair), the Democratic nominee to succeed Murphy in this year’s race for governor, has also used the bill as a cudgel against Republican contender Jack Ciattarelli, a former state assemblyman who has expressed support for the bill. (Ciattarelli and other Republicans have cited the bill’s tax cuts, including a major hike in the State and Local Tax deduction cap, as reasons to support it.)
Today’s executive order directs state agencies to provide a “preliminary assessment” of the One Big Beautiful Bill’s impacts, and a list of recommended policies that the State Legislature can adopt to soften their blow, by October 1 of this year. And by November 15, agencies are directed to provide a list of non-legislative measures that the governor’s office can take related to the bill.