NJ Voters Back Christie's Budget Slash

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is emphatically swinging his budget axe, and in so doing providing perhaps the earliest window into voters’ newfound respect for fiscal austerity.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is emphatically swinging his budget axe, in so doing providing perhaps the earliest window into voters’ newfound respect for fiscal austerity.

The early results are encouraging. Proposing $820 million in cuts in state school aid, Governor Christie had urged voters to reject budgets at the ballot box in districts refusing to implement a wage freeze for teachers. “I just don’t see how citizens should want to support a budget where their teachers have not wanted to be part of the shared sacrifice, ” Christie said at the time. New Jersey Education Association President Barbara Keshishian, whose union boasts a membership of 200,000, said then: “I guess that just says a lot about what the governor thinks about public education.” Last month though, 58% of such budgets went down in defeat.

Elected to lead the Garden State amidst economic stagnation and record job losses, Christie campaigned almost entirely on an economic platform, and is now fulfilling his campaign promises to return the state to fiscal discipline. Facing declining revenues despite increasingly oppressive tax rates, Christie wisely determined that the annual wage increase for teachers was a low priority in light of a projected $11 billion deficit for fiscal year 2011.

Given the referendum issued by New Jersey voters, Christie would appear to have successfully reframed the debate. Powerful labor unions may like to equate the interests of their members with the well-being of the average citizen, but Christie has couched the discussion in terms of the greater and longer term good: In a time of economic strain, the gain of some comes at the expense of the whole.

As the summer approaches, more concessions are being demanded throughout New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, with budget elections being held in many of those school districts. Christie’s hard line in New Jersey has rendered him a darling of budget hawks, and the question is whether voters will share that affection. For all the politicians who have pledged to control government spending, there may be at least one who actually meant it.