TRENTON — Democrats had warned Gov. Chris Christie there would be trouble if he didn't make the full pension payment. He did. They warned they'd give the governor flak if he proposed a tax cut. He didn't.
In fact, for a governor who's made his name with tough talk, Christie gave a budget address Tuesday that contained few fighting words, and even referred to Mahatma Gandhi, a paragon of peaceful resistance.
"I appreciated the governor’s tone today. It was conciliatory and it was an effort to work together," said Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald (D-Camden).
But this being Trenton, there was still plenty to fight about.
After Christie delivered his speech, Democrats told him that his call to make further cuts to public workers’ pensions was a nonstarter. And they jabbed at Christie for the New Jersey economy’s sluggish growth under his watch — at least compared to neighboring states.
"If we stay the course, the pension system will be fine. It’s not going to bankrupt us," said state Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester). "What’s missing here is we haven’t grown our economy, and that’s the issue."
Christie has faced criticism over the state’s slow economic growth, though he points out that hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs have been recovered under his watch. Democrats, however, counter that neighboring states like New York and Pennsylvania have been better able to recover from the global economic crisis of five years ago.
"The governor of New York is saying come to New York and don’t pay taxes for 10 years," Sweeney said. "Because they’ve turned their economy around. They’ve figured it out. We’ve got to figure it out here."
New Jersey’s unemployment rate — which dropped significantly over the last year — is now only slightly higher, at 7.3 percent in December to New York’s 7.1 percent and Pennsylvania’s 6.9 percent.
Democrats didn’t offer any new ideas on reviving the state’s economy, but took shots at Christie for vetoing their 2011 package of bills they said would create jobs, including measures for a job training program, tax credits for businesses investing in new technologies and restoring a suspended tax credit for production companies to film in New Jersey.
"We gave him a whole package," said Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson). "If you want, we can dust it off."
Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth), the lead Republican on the budget committee, said Democrats were "burying their heads in the sand" on rejecting Christie’s call to once again act to reduce pension costs and scoffed at the notion that their bills would have created jobs.
"Give me a break," O’Scanlon said. "A reasonable, fiscally conservative government is a jobs creation policy. Most people just want the government the hell out of the way."
Patrick Murray, a pollster at Monmouth University, said Christie’s budget address was the "most low-key speech that we’ve seen from the governor, ever."
Brigid Harrison, a professor of political science at Montclair State University, said Democrats are emboldened because of the George Washington Bridge scandal facing Christie. .
‘I don’t know if they smell blood in the water or if it’s their newfound status," she said. "But certainly it’s a marked contrast to the Democratic rebuttals we’ve seen in the past."
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