Does anyone remember way back to April of this year? I know it seems like forever ago at this point, but try real hard. We were coming off of the state’s largest tax haul for the year, and suddenly there were millions of dollars missing from the treasury. Projections from the beginning of the year were a bit lofty at best, and OLS was running around chanting “we told you so!” Governor Christie was a bit embarrassed and the Democrats in Trenton pulled no punches when calling him to task in the press. They slammed his tax cut plan, they slammed his prioritized spending plan, and they continuously slammed his revenue projections as irresponsible and irrational based on the economic reality that Jon Corzine helped cause as Governor.
Well, talk about going off message!
This week, Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg announced that a framework has been decided upon for the fast approaching budget hearings. The budget must be passed in July, and as you can tell by looking at your calendar, we are halfway through June.
Weinberg announced, surprisingly, that the Democrats wish to push on with the budget process with Governor Christie’s revenue projections being the adopted standard. Yes, the same projections that the Democrats were screaming about being off by $600 million that we do not have in the coffers.
So it seems that the Democrats in New Jersey were simply against the Governor’s numbers before they were for them. When it was politically expedient to bash Christie and his projections, the Dems piled on. But onces the dust settled and people forgot about April, they are simply going to adopt the potentially overly optimistic figures. But why could this be?
Well, according to the Star Ledger,
[S]ources said their is consensus among the Senate and Assembly leaders to restore some of the governor’s recent cuts to nursing homes, an industry that proponents say is spiraling right toward a spate of bankruptcies.
So the Democrats have constituencies they would like to protect, in this case the nursing home industry, which is admittedly difficult to criticize, and want to have some extra cash to play with and doll out . . . even if that cash won’t be there when the time comes to write the check!
Since the sources for the Ledger were likely Democrat staffers and other left leaning insiders, I would not be surprised if some other pet projects and industries far less palatable than senior care centers are in line for more dough than the Governor was offering in February.
