Much has already been made about Governor Christie's declaration of a "fiscal emergency" and the slashing of hundreds of millions of dollars to numerous agencies. Team Christie says this is related to a dire situation but in addition to pushback on the types of cuts Christie is making, there is pushback on the very basis for which Christie is making such cuts: Gov. Christopher Christie's math doesn't add up, said Josh Zeitz, an aide to the Democrat the new governor replaced 23 days ago, Jon Corzine.
"Even if we accept the governor's revenue projections, his deficit is -- at worst -- somewhere between $739 million and $1.039 billion -- a highly manageable problem when compared to the $4.4 billion budget gap that Jon Corzine closed in 2009," said Zeitz, a former congressional candidate who joined Corzine's senior staff last year.
Budget cuts aside, Christie has already issued a series of Executive Orders, announcements of de facto taxes on the middle class through increased charges for public transportation, and the direct shots taken at unions, agencies and departments all across the state - while being eerily silent on whether he plans on giving a huge tax break to those earning over $400,000 in the form of letting a tax expire on those who need the least help. He has done this under the use of expanded Executive Power - not unlike that of his mentors in the Bush administration.
Being a numbers guy myself (and one who knows new State Treasurer Eristoff from his days with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance), I tend to be (1) trusting of Eristoff, (2) skeptical of Christie, especially since he likes to admit that math isn't his strong suit and has been caught before taking liberties with facts and (3) dorky about numbers so I like to put my "you are entitled to your opinion but are not entitled to your own facts" theory to test.
So in seeing where things truly stand, I've taken a look at the December budget numbers, the December cuts that Corzine proposed and took, and the January budget numbers to see if Christie is using scare tactics and enact his own "shock doctrine" or if there is merit to his proclamations.
I used three documents from the right hand column of the Treasury web site (all pdfs, otherwise I would link them all), dated 12/22/09, 1/15/10 and 2/11/10. Starting with an estimated $924 million shortfall, there were $839 million in additional spending cuts and $135 million in revenue items - leaving a temporary proposed surplus of $50 million, on top of another originally estimated surplus of $500 million from the original budget (a surplus number which, by the way, was accepted by conservative columnists). The January 15 release indicates that revenues were approximately $39 million above projections, getting to nearly $600 billion in surplus. Finally, the January totals recently released show approximately $57 million below budget in revenues.
If we take Christie at his word that there is also an additional $872 million of increased expenditures over budget, that leaves us with a paltry $340 million in projected deficit (and that includes annualizing the additional expenditures). Even for someone as mathematically challenged as Christie, $340 million does not equal $2.2 billion.
But I'll subtract the $300 million in school aid freezes that was included in the $839 million of Corzine cuts, because Christie said Corzine couldn't do that (even though Christie is doing just that all over the place), so that gives a revised deficit of $640 million heading into January (even though Christie clearly can freeze this, and it shouldn't even be considered in the calculation). Then, we can subtract that $300 million in taxes to the super rich that Christie wants to expire, bringing the total to $940 million.
And there you have it - with $300 million in fat cat tax breaks and another $300 million in school funding freezes that Christie has all the power to implement on his own, that brings the deficit back to the more likely $340 million - which includes Christie's own numbers for a full year of additional expenditures.
There is something really rotten here. |
