Democrat and Republican Incompetence Leads to State Shutdown

shut down

Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before…..New Jersey is broken. End of Story! As of 12:01 am New Jersey is officially shut down.  We’ll sort of.  Only enough to draw the ire of resident’s and punish certain groups of public workers.  Those things deemed by the powers that be as “non-essential”.

The last time this happened was in 2006 while NJ was under the watch of Jon Corzine. He shut the government down and the casinos down.  The gamblers and seniors went nuts, the state lost a ton of revenue, so they wrote a law to make sure that never happens again.  So you can still head to Atlantic City today and try to win big.  You’ll need to because New Jersey’s property taxes are nowhere near done skyrocketing and continuing leaving residents broke.  But as for the Government right now- Sorry -We’re Closed!

How did we get here and who’s to blame?

Pretty much everyone elected to State Office is holding the bag on this one.  The Assembly Majority Speaker Vincent Prieto, Governor Christie, the Senate, the Assembly are all at fault.  But they don’t care.  Christie is heading for a new gig on radio and the Senate and Assembly will be pretty much left unchanged after the November elections.  We will get a new Governor though and he’s gonna spend your money like a drunken sailor at a strip club.

The State Budget Showdown for Dummies Edition!

It all started when our astute Governor came up with the great idea of trying to taking money from the sale of Lottery tickets and using it for pension payments for the over $200 Billion underfunded pension system right here in our great garden state, because he cut a deal years ago to make payments and then told everyone to go pound salt – He wasn’t making them!  

Of course, it begs the question how many times can you spend the same dollar?  Lottery sales were supposed to fund education and senior programs that would offset higher increases in property taxes.  That worked out well didn’t it?  

Everyone, he floated that idea by loved it and basically said “You got it, Big Guy”

But why stop there! Christie then decided it would be good for the government to enact a law that would raid the surplus of Horizon Blue Cross, a private non-profit health insurer, and direct their money to pay for the state’s drug treatment programs in his ongoing effort to deal with the state’s opioid crisis.  He just felt they had too much in reserve!

With that, the backdoor wheeling and dealing began!  The Democrats saw this as a great opportunity to push for pork spending in their districts under the disguise of education funding to the tune of an added $350 million to the budget.

So in turn, Senate President Steve Sweeny agreed to get the Lottery and Horizon Heist bills done in return for Christie signing the budget with an added couple of hundred million bucks more to be thrown down the black hole of government spending.

One problem, Assembly Speaker Vince Prieto has stood on ceremony and refused to post the Horizon Heist bill for a vote.  He posted the Budget, twice and has yet to wrangle enough yes votes to get it passed and send to Christie’s desk! 

I know what you’re wondering – If the Democrats control the Assembly why didn’t they all just vote yes and get it passed.  Good question.  Because as the most powerful governor in the Union, Christie would just wipe out the money for their pet projects and call it a day!  Without the lottery and the Horizon Heist, Christie warned the Dems, out comes the pork with the stroke of my veto pen!

Now all the blame can’t be laid at Prieto’s feet!  The Horizon Heist bill is a real slippery slope and it’s pretty much inconceivable that it is the brainchild of a Republican Governor!  Aren’t they supposed to be for less government intrusion?  Yes, Horizon has quite a bit of money in reserves and yes they pay their executives and lobbyists a boat load of money and yes premiums are high! But if the policyholders and public are pissed off, they have a choice to change carrier or mount pressure on the free market for change.  

Passing a bill to take their savings, what’s next?  Oh, we see you have saved too much money for a rainy day or you have too much money for retirement in your 401K Mrs. Smith,  so were just gonna grab it and spend it on our state government spending sprees with no accountability.  Folks….that may not be far off, they basically do it now through taxation.

In that sense, Speaker Prieto has shown some serious chops by refusing to post for a vote.

That begs to ask, then why did Senate President Sweeny even agree to it? Here’s the long and short of it!   He is convinced as soon as Phil Murphy is sworn in as the next Governor of NJ he will repeal Horizon Bill and the pork barrel money still remains in the budget.  Hell, most of that money will be blown already by January of 2018.

So what Does this mean for me and you?

State Beaches – Closed for today.  Same goes for Parks, Motor Vehicle and so forth and so on!

But don’t worry everyone is getting together at 11 am on Saturday for a special session and try to work it out.  Hold on to your hats and your wallets folks you are in for a bumpy ride ahead!

 

About The Author


Irving Lawrence Duckwald III is a freelance writer and blogger based in Central New Jersey. He has a penchant for fried chicken, fast cars, and fancy suits. With a knack for "setting the record straight", he can argue till the cows come home why it's Pork Roll and not Taylor Ham.