Garrett Loves Christie's Budget

The tax credit post is coming, but for those that missed it, here's Garrett's statement praising Governor Christie's budget:

(Washington, DC)– Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) released the following statement praising the bold and necessary moves proposed by Governor Chris Christie in his FY2011 budget proposal.

“It is not an easy task Governor Christie is being faced with but the FY2011 budget proposal is the first commonsense and fiscally responsible initiative a New Jersey executive has taken in years,” said Garrett about Christie’s budget.

In addition to the FY2011 budget, the governor has announced two other initiatives Congressman Garrett supports. First, has initiated a task force to find ways to privatize government jobs and cut government spending. Second, the Governor is proposing an Amendment to the New Jersey Constitution that will restrict property tax increases that are more than 2.5%.

“Years of reckless spending have caught up with New Jersey and we need to stand together and start thinking of new ways to run our state,” said Garrett. “The days of fixing wounds by raising taxes to unprecedented heights have left New Jersey with the highest taxes in the country, a budgetary deficit and a fleeing population. Governor Christie has said ‘enough’.

“The first step to this process is less government spending, which will lead to a more efficiently run government, a lower tax burden for everyone and better government service to the people of New Jersey.”

While I will be discussing other parts of the budget later, Tod Theise (Garrett's likely opponent) would do well to explain to the voters of Paramus that Garrett supports Christie's efforts to force an end to the Blue Laws.

Christie's Budget: Repeal Blue Laws?

I want to begin this post by praising Governor Chris Christie for putting his budget proposals on-line and seeming to welcome the public's eyes into what is sure to be a difficult process. This sort of transparency is needed more not less.

I'm going to use the resources to really look at what he's planning and do a number of posts, some positive and some negative.

This first one is more of a "And exactly how is this going to work?"

From Christie's budget proposal:

Sales Tax - Repeal of Bergen County Blue Laws 65,000

That's $65 million, actually.

The governor's staff seem to believe the people of Bergen County will simply repeal the Blue Laws that are repeatedly upheld by voters. Or is he going to force that down everyone's throats? Pinning $65 million of new revenue on something that, as far as I know, is completely out of his hands is a little dicey to say the least. He has to know that, because it wasn't highlighted in his budget address.

Christie's said many times he doesn't want to resort to one time gimmicks, but realistically speaking, relying on something completely out of your hands to raise $65 million is a gimmick. If/when it doesn't happen, the budget goes out of balance and we have to go back to borrowing.

To make matters worse, even if it was approved by voters, when would it go into effect and how much money would it raise from that point?

Questions that need to be answered.

My next post will be on the film and high tech tax credits. More to come...