Dems challenge Christie on how he handled budget gap

Democratic lawmakers said today New Jersey Gov. Cristie "closed" an $11 billion budget gap largely by avoiding payments instead of actually cutting spending, as he has claimed.

The comments were made during an Assembly Budget Committee hearing called specifically to address issue of the state's structural deficit, which the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services estimates stands at $10.5 billion for fiscal year 2012.

Democrats recalled how Christie last fall called on former Gov. Corzine to drop out of the election in shame because the state faced an $8 billion structural deficit.

David Rosen, legislative budget and finance director of the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services, which calculates the structural deficit, explained that his office estimates the figure by looking at the gap between revenues from existing sources and how much it would cost to fund all of the states statutory obligations and to continue all other programs at the current rate.

Rosen characterized the exercise as largely an academic one because even in good financial times, funding is rarely maintained across the board for all programs, but said his office uses the same methodology from year to year so the numbers are comparable.

Christie is currently on vacation with his family, but spokesman Michael Drewniak called the hearing a "mid-summer partisan dog-and-pony show" and said committee chairman Lou Greenwald (D., Camden) "again failed to take any responsibility whatsoever for his and Governor Corzine's failed stewardship over ballooning spending and tax increases which brought us to where we are today."

"Today's hearing - in which Assemblyman Greenwald professes concern about deficits - comes from the same legislative leader who sponsored a bill last week that would have added $100 million in spending without any funding source or budget cuts," Drewniak said. "New Jersey taxpayers want this budget mess that Governor Christie inherited fixed. They've had enough, and they've had enough of inaction, failed leadership and politically motivated show hearings."

Assemblyman Declan O'Scanlan (R., Monmouth) also fired back at Democrats, saying the "level of hypocrisy astonishes me." He said Christie called on Corzine to drop out of the election not because of the size of the budget gap but because Corzine refused to acknowledge it was a real problem.