Facts Show Tough Week For Governor Christie

For Immediate Release: 
Friday, May 18th, 2012
 

Christie Clearly Cares More About YouTube Hits Than the Negative Numbers Plaguing New Jersey

(NEW JERSEY) – Several clear-cut facts and statistics released this week prove that the reality in New Jersey fails to match Governor Chris Christie's rosy rhetoric. At best, Christie's "Jersey Comeback" is delusional… at worst, it is an outright fib.

Governor Christie runs a remarkable public relations machine and does a tremendous job bending the narrative in his favor, while covering up bad news. So it's no wonder the only numbers that Christie and his press secretary keep talking about this week are the number of YouTube hits for his adorable, humorous video clip co-starring Mayor Cory Booker. Christie should spend less time troll-tweeting Jimmy Fallon, Conan O'Brien, Jerry Seinfeld and Tim Tebow links to his video in a bid for attention and more time getting to the bottom of why New Jersey is limping backwards under his watch.

Numbers don't lie. And here are several numbers that came to light this week alone:

• 230 - On Tuesday, a Department of Treasury report warned that tax collections are falling $230 million short of original budget projections in New Jersey.
• 121 - Yesterday, the Office of Legislative Services warned the state is facing an additional $121 million revenue shortfall in terms of energy tax receipts.
• 351 - When the numbers are crunched, New Jersey is looking at a combined $351 million miss of revenue projections for the year… yet Christie stubbornly continues to push an income tax cut that overwhelmingly benefits the super-wealthy, rather than more equitable property tax cuts that help middle-class families.
• 9.1 - Yesterday, the state Labor Department released April numbers showing that New Jersey's unemployment rose to 9.1% - a full percentage point higher than the national rate of 8.1%.
• 8.4 - Yesterday, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that New Jersey now has the 2nd highest percentage of mortgage loans in foreclosure in the nation. This number continues to spike as rates nationally have fallen to the lowest levels since 2008.
• 54 – Yesterday, the Star Ledger reported that - over the past 8 months alone - Christie has taken 54 out-of-state trips (not even including trips to New York, Philadelphia or the Super Bowl). Ranging from last month's Wisconsin fundraising jaunt in support of union-busting Governor Scott Walker, to this month's Washington D.C. banquet with the right-wing Cato Institute, to last year's secret confab in Colorado with the Koch Brothers, Governor Christie has been more focused on burnishing his right-wing credentials and auditioning for Mitt Romney than he is on New Jersey. (This weekend, Christie will take his 55th trip when he heads to Lexington to headline a fundraising dinner for the Republican Party of Kentucky).

This week's numbers show unemployment and foreclosures going up and tax revenues going down. With depressing trends like this, the biggest question is now wondering which Christie staffer will be tasked to sheepishly take down the gigantic "Jersey Comeback" banner from Christie's taxpayer-funded political rallies.

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One New Jersey is shining a light on politicians who act against the best interests of New Jersey’s residents and who seek to divide our state for their own political gain. It is giving voice to the important issues that affect our daily lives. One New Jersey will closely monitor policy positions and actions of elected officials and expose their records on the issues that matter. You can follow https://twitter.com/#!/OneNJ or search for “One New Jersey” on Facebook.

CHRISTIE BELIES HIS “BIPARTISANSHIP”

For Immediate Release:
Monday, May 7th, 2012

In Speech to Right-Wing Think Tank, Christie Shows True Colors

(NEW JERSEY) – On Friday, Governor Chris Christie once again jetted off to speak to a fawning out-of-state audience in his incessant quest to bolster talk about being a potential vice-presidential pick. This time it was at an awards banquet in Washington, D.C. sponsored by The Cato Institute – a right-wing think tank.

The next time Christie tries to tell someone he is bipartisan and there is room on the big boulevard of ideas in New Jersey, just remember these words from his speech:

"I could sit down and negotiate with the Democratic leadership and the Democratically controlled legislature to try to come to an agreement on these cuts, or, thanks to New Jersey's unique Constitutional structure, cut spending through executive order. Now, for those of you who watched me over the past two and a half years, if you believe I chose the former, then it is now time for you to leave. You are note smart enough to be here at the Milton Friedman Dinner." – Governor Chris Christie (5/4/2012)

In Christie’s world, bipartisanship means others simply acquiescing to his desires both politically and policy-wise. The Christie definition of bipartisanship is dictating the policies and getting Democrats to vote for them. This is a stale retread of the “my way or the highway approach,” rather than his lip service of meeting others on the boulevard of ideas.

Here is just a small sampling of Christie’s “bipartisan” leadership:

• Demanding income tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the super-wealthy, rather than more equitable property tax cuts that help middle-class families
• Saying he had better things to do – like re-arrange his sock drawer – than debate a Democrat over New Jersey’s tax plans
• Refusing to even contemplate a millionaire’s tax
• Line-item-vetoing women’s health funding – which traditionally has bipartisan support in New Jersey
• Pushing an ALEC-approved raft of policy proposals
• Rolling back decades of environmental protections via the DEP Waiver Rules
• Pulling New Jersey out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI)
• Cancelling the long bipartisan-supported ARC Tunnel linking New Jersey to Manhattan
• Waging war on an independent judiciary
• Degrading defiant Democrats with name-calling – such as “jerk”, “numbnuts” and “liar”

** One more note from the Cato Institute speech that shows how Governor Christie plays fast and loose with the facts is when Bergen Record columnist Herb Jackson noted: “Christie stressed the importance of being honest with the public, but he also used exaggerated figures to make the deficits he closed and the tax cuts he’s enacted and proposed seem larger. For example, he cited the multiyear value of tax cuts.”

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One New Jersey is shining a light on politicians who act against the best interests of New Jersey’s residents and who seek to divide our state for their own political gain. It is giving voice to the important issues that affect our daily lives. One New Jersey will closely monitor policy positions and actions of elected officials and expose their records on the issues that matter. You can follow One New Jersey on Twitter (@OneNJ) or search for “One New Jersey” on Facebook.

Commentary: GOP's "small government" talk is hollow

By Julian E. Zelizer
Special to CNN

note: Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. His new book, "Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security -- From World War II to the War on Terrorism," will be published this fall by Basic Books. Zelizer writes widely on current events.

PRINCETON, New Jersey (CNN) -- As the budget debate heats up, Republicans are warning of socialism in the White House and claiming that Democrats are rushing back to their dangerous tonic of big government.

Speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Rush Limbaugh warned that "the future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried, tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster."

On CNN, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he is worried that the administration is using the current economic conditions to "justify" a "massive expansion" in the government.

After the past eight years in American politics, it is impossible to reconcile current promises by conservatives for small government with the historical record of President Bush's administration. Most experts on the left and right can find one issue upon which to agree: The federal government expanded significantly after 2001 when George W. Bush was in the White House.

The growth did not just take place with national security spending but with domestic programs as well. Even as the administration fought to reduce the cost of certain programs by preventing cost-of-living increases in benefits, in many other areas of policy -- such as Medicare prescription drug benefits, federal education standards and agricultural subsidies -- the federal government expanded by leaps and bounds. And then there are the costs of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Federal spending stood at about $1.9 trillion in 2000, when Democrat Bill Clinton ended his presidency. In his final year in office, Bush proposed to spend $3.1 trillion for fiscal year 2009. President Obama's budget proposal for fiscal 2010 is $3.6 trillion.

Nor can Republicans blame a Democratic Congress for being responsible for these trends. Much of the expansion took place between 2002 and 2006, when Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House. The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes was writing about "big government conservatism" back in 2003.

Two years later, the right-wing CATO Institute published a report noting that total government spending had grown by 33 percent in President Bush's first term, lamenting that "President Bush has presided over the largest overall increase in inflation-adjusted federal spending since Lyndon B. Johnson."

There were some areas where Bush backed off government cuts because programs were too popular, like Social Security. In other areas, like federal education policy and prescription drug benefits, the president seemed enthusiastic about bigger government.

Bush and Cheney also embraced a vision of presidential power that revolved around a largely unregulated and centralized executive branch with massive authority over the citizenry. This was a far cry from the days of Ohio Sen. Robert Taft, a Republican who constantly warned about the dangers of presidential power to America's liberties.

After the 2008 election, Cheney was not apologetic. He explained that "the president believes, I believe very deeply, in a strong executive, and I think that's essential in this day and age. And I think the Obama administration is not likely to cede that authority back to the Congress. I think they'll find that given a challenge they face, they'll need all the authority they can muster."

Importantly, the marriage between conservatism and a robust federal government was not unique to the Bush presidency. The roots of Bush's comfort with government can be traced to the Republican Right in the 1950s, members of Congress who called for an aggressive response to domestic and international communism.

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were two Republicans who pragmatically accepted that Americans had come to expect that the federal government would protect against certain risks and that trying to reverse politics to the pre-New Deal period would be politically suicidal.

"Should any political party," Eisenhower said, "attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history."

When Nixon and congressional Republicans battled with Democrats over Social Security between 1970 and 1972, the debate revolved over how much to expand the program. Congressional Democrats wanted to increase benefits through the legislative process, while Nixon wanted to index benefits so they automatically increased with inflation.

Nixon and Congress did both.

President Reagan backed off his most ambitious efforts to cut government, most dramatically when he abandoned his proposal to curtail Social Security after facing a fierce backlash, while the military budget boomed. President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, which was one of the boldest regulatory expansions of government since the civil rights laws of the 1960s.

All of these presidents, particularly Nixon and Reagan, likewise promoted a muscular vision of presidential power that strengthened the authority of government and introduced concepts, such as the unitary executive, which would become the intellectual underpinning of the Bush administration.

"When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal," Nixon told David Frost in 1977. Like it or not, strengthening the presidency is one of the most important ways in which the role of government has grown since the nation's founding.

Fifty years of American history have shown that even the party that traditionally advocates small government on the campaign trail opts for big government when it gets into power. The rhetoric of small government has helped Republicans attract some support in the past, but it is hard to take such rhetoric seriously given the historical record -- and it is a now a question whether this rhetoric is even appealing since many Americans want government to help them cope with the current crisis.