The Assembly today passed a $32.9 billion state budget that cuts spending, imposes no new taxes and increases aid to education while reducing homestead rebates and state aid to towns and hospitals. The vote was 45-34.

Democrats hailed its “historic” spending cuts, which they said were necessitated by the state’s dire financial situation, while Republicans branded it a “budget of lost opportunities.”

Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Louis Greenwald (D-Camden) noted the budget is $600 million less than the one approved a year ago, “only the fourth time in 57 years that spending from one year to the next has been reduced.”

(Source: Star Ledger)