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Chris Christie Knows How to Lead in Times of Financial Crisis

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Perhaps the most defining act of responsible Republican governance this past year was New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s decision last month to kill “a proposed train tunnel under the Hudson River between North Jersey and Manhattan because his state’s share of the construction costs was too high.”

This tunnel may well be a great idea and may well facilitate commutes between the Big Apple and the Garden State, but that latter jurisdiction is strapped for funds and, like any responsible enterprise, first has to meet the cost of essential services before proceeding to other improvements.   In the near future, political leaders are going to have to make many such choices where they will have to kill potentially beneficial projects because their jurisdictions lack the resources to pay for them.

Making such choices is a primary ingredient of a successful leader.  And not just in politics.  Anyone who has ever served on the board of a company or club knows what it’s like when you’re discussing ways to improve your organization.  People will come up with suggestions which the secretary often dutifully records.  And sometimes as you weigh the merits of various projects, with this or that member suggesting means to improve on the ideas, you’ll find your enthusiasm wane when the treasurer chimes in, reminding her fellow board members of the limited resources in your group’s kitty.

So, kudos to Governor Christie for adding a dose of common sense to our budgetary debates.  No wonder he’s been so dismissive of his state’s senior Senator’s criticism of the project, telling a reporter that all that Democrat “knows how to do is blow hot air“.  And that’s basically how governors are going to have to act when politicians, their appetite like that of the Cyclops in the Odyssey never sated, keep begging for more.

Jerry, are you paying attention?

Comments

  1. Sorry for you guys in CA, but if you expect dopey J Brown to be anything like Chris Christie take another drag.
    The thing I lov about Daniels, Christie, McConnel and Jindle is they all said…hmm we are out of money, we took over from corrupt liberal Dems…and poof all 4 balanced their states budgets by making hard choices. It ain’t bean bag, but it ain’t rocket science either.

  2. Christie shows, with his refusal to back down from the media/unions/etc, just how cowardly the rest of the Republican leadership is. I know this is the kind of fearless leadership I want from ALL Republicans. Instead, out of the thousands of Republican elected officials throughout the country — we have ONE guy who actually has a pair.

    I know Republicans are paying attention to Chrisite, but it has yet to be seen if they will actually grow some cojones of their own as a result.

    Governor Moonbeam? I dont know. He may surprise people. We will find out which he values more — his ideology (like Obama), or success. He will certainly have to choose between the two.

  3. “if you expect dopey J Brown to be anything like Chris Christie take another drag”

    —————-

    He was once called a “Hippie-Nazi”, does that count? (Jello Biafra?)
    .

  5. My favorite Christie epigram – a NJ teacher (read: union employee) whined that if her pay and benefits were cut, she’d have to move out of the state to get a job.

    Christie’s response: “I’ll help you pack.”

    F’ing brilliant! 😉

    Regards,
    Peter H.

  6. Governor Moonbeam will have to enter the Twilight Zone for him to do the right thing; otherwise, he’s going to help push California over the fiscal edge of the cliff while he says, as he’s falling, he’s there to help.

  7. The only thing I have to add is that not only is New Jersey broke… New York is broke (in a California way) and so is the federal government.

    There just isn’t any money left.

  10. What Brown thinks is going to happen, is that he’ll be able to get a bailout from the Feds (with the rest of America’s tax dollars) and that’ll let him pull a GM: pay off his Democratic donor/voter base (the unions) and trashing everyone else’s due bills.

    Hopefully, he’s dead wrong. I don’t think there’s a Republican elected official in America who underestimates how unversally unpopular a Cali bailout would be.

  11. Interesting details:

    The catch was that Jersey would pay for any cost overruns.

    What are the chances that this project would have been completed on budget? Consider the history. Expected to cost less than $5 billion during initial planning, the price tag jumped to $7.6 billion amid environmental impact studies in 2005. By the fall of 2008, $8.7 billion was the working assumption—until last summer when the feds forecast at least $10.9 billion, and possibly as much as $13.7 billion.

    Holy crap! Environmental impact studies tacked on almost $3 billion? Whose pockets would that have lined?

  13. Yes, no tunnel (which the northeast travel corridor has needed for decades), squashed by a person who has no real vision. And countries like China continue to build the way for the future of fast, modern rail. I’m starting to think the love-fest people have for these narrow minded people is akin to the band Spinal Tap – Full of its own idea of its own glory, yet completely oblivious to its own demise.

  16. Ah yes, Kevin. We should emulate China… Oragan harvesting, polution so on a clear day you can see, oh wait, there are no clear days.

    And yes let’s not forget the tolerant loving communist policies for homosexuals. Why you could ride those high speed rails right to internment camps!

  18. Yes, no tunnel (which the northeast travel corridor has needed for decades), squashed by a person who has no real vision.

    The problem with the Utopian schemes of people with “real vision” is we no longer have any “real money” to pay for them with.

    The Big Dig in Boston started with a cost estimate of $4 Billion dollars. It ended up costing $14.6 Billion. Given that, I think if anything, Christie’s estimate of $5 Billion in probable cost over-runs was a low-ball estimate.

    So, question for Kevin. If the NJ-NY tunnel is so important, where shall we cut the budget by $5 Billion to pay for it? Education? Road maintenance? Bureaucrat pensions? Medicare? Which sacred cow gets made into hamburgers for the sake of this “vision?” Or, do you want politicians to do what they always do and screw the taxpayers?

  19. Let’s not forget, it could be done privately – IF it were truly needed, and IF government (in various forms) were not in the way.

    By definition, government projects of this kind are either projects that aren’t really needed (they don’t contribute enough value for their users to pay fees), or badly needed projects that government in its various forms won’t *let* the private sector get done.

  21. @ILC . . . your comment is truly refreshing! A market economy could fill the need if unhindered by government. Even we conservatives have become subtly brainwashed to believe infrastructure projects can be done only by government.

  22. Hey Kevin! This Jerseyan has some good news for you! There are many reports that Christie is willing to discuss with NYC Mayor Bloomberg the possibility of extending the New York subway 7 line into the under-used Seacaucus boon-dog… er, I mean train hub named after our senior Senator Frank Lautenberg. New York would actually pay a fair share along with NJ and some of the federal already allocated for the ARC tunnel could be shifted to this new proposal.

    And we’re waiting with baited breath for Lautenberg to ring in with his pledge to get support from DC for this worthy project…………………………………………….. Well, not so much on that last sentence.

  23. …and all this was because Christie had the backbone to actually shield us lowly taxpayers from having to pay even more of our meager dollars in the name of those inevitable cost overruns that happened to have a core worthy project attached to it.

  24. As someone who uses NJ Transit to go to New York quite a bit, I was skeptical about the new tunnel. It just seemed to pricey. In fact, ironically, part of the reason the cost was as high as it was, is the 7 line extension, which would have caused another station below Penn Station to be built to accommodate this tunnel project. This also seemed like a waste in light of the current plans to revamp Penn Station.

    I’m encouraged by the new 7 line proposal. My understanding is that Christie likes the plan as well. We’ll see.