The Tax Foundation's blog criticizes New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for a $260 million tax credit for a Holtec nuclear energy manufacturing facility in Camden: "Instead of carving up the tax base by choosing winners and losers for political expediency, New Jersey should implement broad based reforms to its tax code to create a neutral environment for business development."
A similar critique can be made of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's $135 million expenditure, announced this week, on a facility to build silicon carbide chips in Albany. A report from GE, which says it plans to manufacture chips for its MRI machines and oil and gas pumps in the facility, estimates that the chips could "improve the efficiency of wind and solar farms by more than 1 percent." The New York project is structured as an expenditure rather than as a tax credit, but the principle is the same. If this technology is so great, why does it require a taxpayer subsidy?
