New Jersey’s Bad Government

7 July 2010 @ 22:58 | Posted in » New Jersey, Politics

Governor Christie announced today that he will borrow $1.4 billion to fund the Transportation Trust Fund this year. The TTF budget is $895 million. Of that, $850 million is payment on TTF’s debt. That’s correct, the TTF is so in debt, most of its budget is to pay the vig on money it has already borrowed. What do you think new borrowing is going to do to next year’s budget?

Oh sure, Christie has promised to fix this.

“What it’s going to look like, I have no idea yet,” he said. “I have not given it deep thought in terms of how we’re going to fix the problem and, candidly, I want to get advice from other people on how to fix it.”

This is how we got into this mess. Five years ago I said the same thing. Voters elected Governor Corzine. The very first thing Corzine did was borrow money to fill the potholes. That bill will come due 30 years from now. We will have re-filled the potholes with new borrowing long before then.

There is absolutely no difference between Christie’s move today and Corzine’s then. Different men, same bad government. How pathetic it is that even the highly inefficient federal government laments New Jersey’s decisions?

This is not leadership. Not one dime should be loaned to New Jersey for the TTF until a real plan is in place. Christie’s move is pure politics . . . just stemming the tide until later. Later, the bill balloons. He was supposed to be different. This is the same corrupt politics we have had all along.

Governor Christie, you talk tough to the teachers, but you are on your knees servicing your political cronies on this one. We deserve better than this.