Yo New Jersey, Can We Trade Governors?

Compared with this cartoon character we have running New York State, almost anyone would be an improvement, but I want Governor Chris Christie, New Jersey’s new rock and roll fiscal conservative – who is actually doing his job.

Christie is anomaly in politics in that he is actually carrying out the “change” he promised during the election, in which he trounced the hapless Corzine Regime.

Here he is in the Wall Street Journal talking about restoring the financial health of the Smokestack Garden State:

‘I said all during the campaign last year that I was going to govern as if I was a one-termer,” explains New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on a visit this week to the Journal’s editorial board. “And everybody felt that it was just stuff you say during a campaign to sound good. I think after the first 12 weeks, given the stuff I’ve done, they figure: ‘He’s just crazy enough to do it.'”

Call it crazy, or just call it sensible: Mr. Christie is on a mission to make New Jersey competitive once again in the contest to attract people and capital. During last fall’s campaign, while his opponent obliquely criticized Mr. Christie’s size, some Republicans worried that their candidate was squishy—that he wasn’t serious about cutting spending and reining in taxes. Turns out they were wrong.

Christie goes on to refer to NJ as a ‘failed experiment’ in big government – the state raised taxes and fees 115 times leaving residents with the privilege of “suffering under the nation’s highest tax burden”.  Even with this tax burden, revenues still couldn’t keep pace with budgets and spending.  A free-for-all with a bill that’s come due that no one can actually pay for.

Christie’s ideas are tough and smart.  If he can truly rein in this small “failed experiment”, he may provide a model for the larger experiment we’ve undertaken on a national level.  That clean-up project is right around the corner.

Source:

New Jersey’s ‘Failed Experiment’ (WSJ)