Corzine’s budget folly
Posted on 14 January 2009
Governor Corzine gave his state of the state speech yesterday. The most interesting part of the Governor’s speech is the complete lack of real content and ideas for changing New Jersey’s fiscal situation.
From the start, it was clear that this was not a business speech, it was purely politics. Shortly into the speech, Corzine alternated from patting himself on the back to throwing out some anecdotes to citizens hard times and his trip to Iraq. One should note here that while Iraq is may be a good topic for a speech on military families or military spending or securing our bases in New Jersey, it is a distraction in the state of the state address. And it represented just one of 10 stories designed to avoid the real topic and addressing it with any substance.
While Corzine called the economy priority #1, #2 and #3, he immediately switched to Bush bashing. And then spending. And then more spending. He went from patting himself on the back for saving 800 million dollars in spending last year and then proceeding to borrow 3.9 BILLION. He also mentioned 3 times that he cut spending by 1.4 million this year but doesn’t once mention what he actually cut.
He touted the following accomplishments:
These highlighted achievements and work in no way describe the entirety of our agenda and activities.
Keep in mind:
We enacted a family leave insurance program, the second in the nation
A completely anti-business program that will not help anyone with real family issues as we have commented on previously.
We strengthened our worker’s compensation system
We continued reform of our public pension system
What strengthening? You made it harder for businesses to hire and keep workers employed? And when and where did the public pension reform occur. I follow his every move and I have not identified anything substantial.
We appointed record numbers of women and minorities to the bench
We created the office of supplier diversity
Wouldn’t it be nice if we felt these appointments were about awarding excellent individuals and minority companies rather than political correctness. I would love this governor to say that he helped give 100 kids from Trenton the wherewithal to get a law degree. But he won’t say that because he didn’t do anything to really help minorities in this state. This is pure drivel.
We built and dedicated a long-overdue World War II memorial
We reformed the Charity Care funding formula to better protect health care for our most vulnerable, especially in our urban areas
Sorry if I am underwhelmed by these achievements.
We created an inter-agency Council on the Prevention of Homelessness
We finalized the Highlands Master Plan
What would we do without commissions and plans. I wonder how many new state jobs it took to do these projects?
We built and participated in a regional auction system for carbon credits
And, we delivered a nationally recognized Energy Master Plan as well as a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan
Hey Governor? Didn’t you hear? Global warming is on hold due to the impending ice age.
He finished up with a plan of caps, and projections and hopes that Obama will bail the state out. But not one concrete plan. Not one.
If you would like to read the text of the speech in its entirety, you can access it here.
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