NJ Update: What Chris "Porky Pig" Christie giveth and what he taketh away

After wielding his powerful veto cleaver, Governor Christie announces the conclusion of the NJ state budget process.

by Ken

One thing that you and I may not have known before last Thursday, when NJ Gov. Chris "Porky Pig" Christie took a meat cleaver to the deadline-day budget passed by the nominally Democratic-controlled state legislature, but that the governor certainly knew and State Senate President Steve Sweeney surely should have known, is that the New Jersey governor has line-item veto power over the budget.

Line-item veto has always struck me as an absurdity. It's one thing for the chief executive of a state to have the right to accept or reject laws passed by the legislature. It's quite another to give that chief executive the effective power to rewrite legislation, if only by subtraction. But facts are facts, and the fact is that the New Jersey governor has line-item veto power, and as a colleague who specializes in legislative issues points out, against a governor with that, "negotiation" can become meaningless, since one party has all the leverage.

And it's not as if Governor Porky doesn't know how to veto bills. At the same time that he signed his hand-crafted version of the budget, he "vetoed bills that would tax millionaires more to fund schools and provide tax relief for low-wage earners." (Does that juxtaposition of vetoed bills tell us everything we need to know about the Porkyman's agenda?)

It was widely reported Friday that no sooner had the legislature passed the budget than the governor made a public show of signing, not the legislature's version, but his own shredding of it.

At a news conference to unveil the cuts he made with line-item vetoes, Christie blasted the Democratic budget as "unconstitutional" and based on "fantasy revenue found between the cushions."

"They decided to deceive the citizens of the state with a budget that makes them look like Santa Claus in an election year," Christie said. "How shocking, politicians deceiving and pandering to voters to get re-elected."

Christie had one explanation for his individual reductions: "We can’t afford it."

Of course he was lying. But then, he always lies. This is a man awash in corruption as well as right-wing hackery. He mouths off about changing the course of how New Jersey got in such financial trouble, but of course everything he says about it is a lie. Lying comes naturally to him.

Anyway, while the governor's slashing of the passed budget was widely reported, I'm not aware of much coverage of what exactly he cut under the pretext of unconstitutionality. As if people like Governor Porky, filled to the brim with their own agendas, give a hoot about constitutionality.

In a rather curious context, to which I'll come back in a moment, we got some specifics of how the governor wielded his budget cleaver. It turns out there's money for the people he wants there to be money for (like himself), but not for the people he doesn't.

The governor cut the Senate and Assembly budgets, but not his own, a move that is unprecedented. He cut money from the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services, the outfit that sided with Democrats on this year’s revenue estimates.

He cut a fellowship program run by Alan Rosenthal, the Rutgers University professor who served as referee in this year’s legislative redistricting fight, and sided with Democrats.

When Democrats tried to restore money to a few favorite programs -- including college scholarships for poor students, and legal aid for the needy -- the governor not only rejected the additions, he added new cuts on top of that.

He mowed down a series of Democratic add-ons, including $45 million in tax credits for the working poor, $9 million in health care for the working poor, $8 million for women’s health care, another $8 million in AIDS funding and $9 million in mental-health services.

But the governor added $150 million in school aid for the suburbs, including the wealthiest towns in the state. That is enough to restore all the cuts just listed.

(Just how, I'm wondering, did the Porkyman manage to add something to the budget?)

Now, as to that curious source. Senate President Sweeney himself went blubbering to the press. The head on Newark Star-Ledger columnist Tom Moran's Sunday piece read: "Sweeney unleashes his fury as N.J. budget battle turns personal."

Now Sweeney, you may recall from my piece last Thursday, is the tool installed as Senate president by South Jersey right-wing Democratic boss George Norcross in a coup that ousted widely popular Sen. Dick Codey. Codey had endeared himself to many New Jerseyans during the time he served as acting governor as well as Senate president following the resignation of Gov. Jim McGreevey in November 2004 -- only to be quickly muscled out of any idea of running for governor in his own right when, as Salon's Steve Kornacki put it, "Norcross and the state's other Democratic bosses all lined up with [Jon] Corzine (who plied virtually every county and municipal Democratic organization in the state with money)."

I don't know whether this rises to the level of irony, or just "Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas" politics, but when it came time for Corzine to run for reelection, Christie actively courted Norcross and Newark Democratic boss Steve Adubato Sr., and as Kornacki put it:

It's a widely held view by insiders from both parties in New Jersey that Norcross and Adubato essentially left Governor Jon Corzine to wither on the vine in the '09 campaign, boosting Christie's prospects in the Democratic state. In fact, Christie's first public appearance after his victory that fall was with Adubato in the heart of his political/educational/social services empire in Newark's North Ward. On the public employee benefits and public television votes this past week, just about all of the Democratic defections can be linked to the Norcross and Adubato camps.

Note that the Pigman had gotten what he wanted from Sweeney, Senate approval of his assault on public employee benefits (and also acceptance of his plan to turn New Jersey's public television stations over to New York's WNET), by the time the legislature produced the budget that he proceeded to carve up -- and on those crucial votes, Sweeney actually functioned as the right-wing governor's partner.

Steve Sweeney: star of Puppet Senate President Theater?

Now Sweeney is feeling betrayed, or so he claimed. Here's the Star-Ledger's Tom Moran:

Senate President Stephen Sweeney went to bed furious Thursday night after reviewing the governor’s line-item veto of the state budget.

He woke up Friday morning even angrier.

"This is all about him being a bully and a punk," he said in an interview Friday.

"I wanted to punch him in his head."

Sweeney had just risked his political neck to support the governor’s pension and health reform, and his reward was a slap across the face. The governor’s budget was a brusque rejection of every Democratic move, and Sweeney couldn’t even get an audience with the governor to discuss it.

"You know who he reminds me of?" Sweeney says. "Mr. Potter from ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ the mean old bastard who screws everybody."

There is some understandable disagreement as to whether Sweeney is really that rage-filled, or is enacting a bit of Puppet Senate President Theater to cover the embarrassment of having been caught doing the Pigman's right-wing hatchetwork for him. Oh, no one's suggesting that he has any remorse for betraying workers who would once have expected support from a Democratic pol. No, it's the "getting caught" part that would, in this view, have set him to emoting. Salon's Kornacki hasn't been the only one looking askance at the unholy alliance of Norcross and Adubato, and their puppets Sweeney in the Senate and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, who's actually on the payroll of Adubato protégé Joseph DiVincenzo Jr., the Essex County executive, as an assistant county administrator. I notice that on her Assembly webpage, Speaker Oliver has also come out swinging against the governor's budget whackery.

What really seems to get to Sweeney, though, is that his until-recently BFF didn't treat him right.

The governor’s budget, he says, is full of vindictive cuts designed to punish Democrats, and anyone else who dared to defy him. And he is furious that the governor refused to talk to him during the final week.

"After all the heavy lifting that’s been done — the property tax cap, the interest arbitration reform, the pension and health care reform — and the guy wouldn’t even talk to me?" Sweeney asks.

The details are even uglier. The governor, Sweeney said, personally told him they would talk. His staff called Sweeney and asked him to remain close all day Wednesday. At one point, the staff told him the governor planned to call in five minutes.

No call.

No negotiations.

"I sat in my office all day like a nitwit, figuring we were going to talk," Sweeney says.

Um, like a nitwit, Steve?

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