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.
I have extremely fond memories of The Dead opening the Rochester show with Box of Rain –> Cold Rain & Snow. Despite it being June, it was cold and rainy. Today demands this song . . . Governor Corzine is such a great financial wizard. He agreed to have New Jersey taxpayers pay approximately $22,000 per day to get out of series of bonds former governors Florio and McGreevey negotiated. How’s that for efficiency? Oh, and his former employer, Goldman Sachs has a cushy $1 million monthly draw from Jersey taxpayers from the Transportation Trust Fund. Good riddance, Corzine . . . If that isn’t bad enough news for you, here comes the report showing that New Jersey is over $33 billion in debt. The report accurately points to the “independent” agencies ability to indebt taxpayers without voter approval . . . Locally, Lou Magazzu is pushing for creating another agency to issue bonds. He just took over the Improvement Authority that already has that ability. Meanwhile, taxpayers are screwed . . . I stumbled across The Best Christmas Pageant Ever the other day. This is a wonderful read aloud book. Treat yourself to this wonderful tale of the Herdmans . . . Here’s a different take on the White House party crashers . . .
Corzine will be at the Cumberland County Improvement Authority, located at 2 High St., at 4 p.m. to make an announcement regarding the intersection of routes 49 and 55.
Gov. Jon S. Corzine revealed Thursday the 55 transportation projects that state officials chose to receive New Jersey’s $894 million share of federal transportation funding. Not one Cumberland County project was among them.
Why would Corzine sneak up on Millville tomorrow? To make political amends for the above. It is an election year after all. Millville government didn’t even know he was coming.
I suspect that Corzine will do the dance: talk about the importance of Cumberland County, talk about the need of expanding the roads here, talk about how government (and particularly, he) is concerned for the community here, and tell us that he will do all he can to help out. He’ll do all this without committing to anything. No money will be slated, just a promise that he’ll do something in the futre.
How could he possibly come up with cash now? He would be raked over the coals for spending if he produce dollars tomorrow.
I hope to make the meeting, although I will be late if I get there. I am not too concerned as the last time I went to see Corzine here in town, I waited more than an hour and a half before I left. My time is too valuable to wait.
I have two articles in my browser discussing New Jersey and Governor Corzine. The first states that Corzine is poised to cut state spending 10% in next year’s budget.
Gov. Jon Corzine plans to cut state spending to $30 billion a year, a 10 percent reduction from last year, according to a report in the Record.
The report said Corzine is preparing the cuts due to the economic downturn, which could reduce state revenue by $1.2 billion this year and possible $5 billion next year. Corzine’s planned cuts would mean fewer state services, smaller property tax rebate checks and reduced benefits for state employees.
The state will invest $2.8 billion in transportation infrastructure projects through the end of 2009. They include construction work on the Garden State Parkway, New Jersey Turnpike and Atlantic City Expressway.
It is possible that this new spending could be offset with more than the 10% cuts the first article calls for. It is severely unlikely, however. The 10% cut is slightly more than the cost of this program. All this means is that New Jersey taxpayers will still be funding spending at the full 100% rate we are this year.
Several years ago I spent some time documenting the ridiculous of sin taxes. Taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, and the like are promoted as a way to curtail behavior society scofts at. The more a government taxes these things, the fewer citizens will participate in them thus society is better off.
Of course, using government to curtail legal business is bad public policy.
But all that is just a smoke screen. The taxes are levied not to curtail the behavior but to raise cash for the government to spend. The irony is that government relies upon that bad behavior to fund its business. It needs folks purchasing butts and hooch.
It is easy to tax sins. There aren’t many who will go out on a limb to argue against taxing cigarettes. If money is needed, ’tis better to get it from some group like that than property owners.
For the second consecutive year, New Jersey has shattered the conventional wisdom on cigarette tax increases: That higher taxes serve the dual and seemingly opposite purposes of reducing and exploiting cigarette consumption.
Do you recall, dear reader, the tobacco settlements from about eight years ago? At the time, states sued the tobacco companies for billions of dollars claiming the tobacco companies are responsible for the health costs states incur treating tobacco-related illnesses. New Jersey, like many other states, received billions of dollars.
We don’t hear about that cash any longer do we? That’s because then governor Jim “I’m a Gay American” McGreevey sold off that cash. Yes, we were supposed to receive some each year. He decided to cash out and blow it on political favors and cute boys working at Drumthwacket. That bundle of cash is now a liability for the state as we are paying the vig on the bonds the state sold.
In New Jersey we take assets and make them liabilities.
Governor Corzine has done the same thing. He needed cash to get matching federal highway dollars. He indebted New Jersey for 30 years to get that cash. We’ll be paying off the debt on those loans well after my children are graduated from college. Still not enough money in the coffers for spending, Corzine rammed through a sales tax hike after shutting down government.
So on the heels of learning that New Jersey lost even more tax revenue from the regressive tobacco taxes, what do we get from the Garden State government?
Well, on Friday we learned of a two-phase toll hike scheme to tax raise money.
Speaking this morning on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Corzine proposed the federal government buy the mortgages at market value then restructure them, and possibly buy houses outright.
A short time later, in an appearance on WABC’s “Eyewitness News Up Close,” Corzine indicated he would follow his own advice, suggesting the state would be buying homes.
“We’re going to do some on-the-ground purchases of homes,” he said. He vowed to “protect neighborhoods” from being devastated by large numbers of foreclosures, which lower the values of nearby houses.
So, the federal government commandeers over $1 trillion dollars to bail out these flawed bankers and now a flawed banker running New Jersey is going to commandeer even more of my money to bail out the folks who bought over their heads. Meanwhile those of us who lead a prudent life pay and pay. Remember, Corzine is a likely candidate for President Obama’s Treasury Secretary.
As the title of this piece states, these lessons have been internalized. It matters not what I think, how I vote, what I do: government is run amok and will keep exercising its power to reach into my pocket.
