RUSH: Okay. We played for you excerpts and we read portions of Governor Chris Christie’s speech to the legislature in New Jersey where he said (paraphrased), ‘We’re going to cut programs, 375 programs. We can’t go on. We’re bankrupt. We’re cutting back. We’re cutting back. We’re cutting back. We’re cutting back, and we are not raising taxes. As predicted, the New York-Philadelphia media has unloaded.’ They are attacking Chris Christie with all their might. The same thing happened when Rudy took office in New York City. It happened when Reagan took over California. Here’s a montage of New York and Philadelphia media.
REPORTER: New Jersey citizens railed about Governor Chris Christie’s proposed budget cuts.
REPORTER: …criticizing the Christie cuts as unfair and unwise.
REPORTER: Governor Christie is not budging on his plan to cut the agency’s funds, and officials say that means riders are going to have to pay the price.
REPORTER: Rail and bus commuters today voiced their anger.
REPORTER: Chris Christie unveiled his painful budget for the Garden State.
REPORTER: Governor Chris Christie gets ready to slash state funding.
REPORTER: I heard one key word in a board meeting today. It was ‘painful.’
RUSH: So the media, predictably, is outraged. ‘Nobody wants these cuts!’ It’s only why he was elected. I just looked at the roster of calls. Are you really…? Snerdley, are you wanting me to explode today? Okay, so that’s the media. Now let’s go to the Democrats in New Jersey, going back to the same old page in the same old playbook: A parade of victims to blast Chris Christie’s budget cuts. Here we have at the statehouse in Trenton an assembly budget committee meeting, a 13-year-old blind student, Rocco Fiorentino, testified. Here’s what the 13-year-old blind student said.
FIORENTINO: These budget cuts would directly affect the education of each and every child who deals with a visual challenge. Cutting costs, at all costs, is not going to solve the long-term budget challenges in this great state.
RUSH: So who wrote this guy’s statement? Same old page, same old playbook: Bring out a blind 13-year-old! This is no different than the ’95 budget battle where they brought all these students saying, ‘The Republicans want us to starve! They want us to starve no school lunch! (sobbing)’ It’s just same old playbook. I’m telling you, people are fed up with this.
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RUSH: Now back to Chris Christie, responding to the stuck pigs and weasels in the New Jersey-Philadelphia media and the New Jersey Democrat Party, all bent outta shape about his attempt to save their little state from utter bankruptcy.
CHRISTIE: No, I think they could be better. I think that the contracts they’ve given out have been too rich. They have been, at times, a patronage pit for political hiring. That’s why they’re called hard choices, Christine. If there were easy choices left we’d make them. I got hired for this job to come in and clean up this mess. That’s what I’m going to do.
RUSH: That’s Chris Christie. He was on where we CBS TV’s News at Five, Eyeball News at Five, in New York City last night with the correspondent Christine Sloan asking the questions. This is last night on WNYW-TV’s Eyeball News at Six, the correspondent Giovanna Drpic interviewed Christie and said, ‘What will be affected here?’
CHRISTIE: This will not affect classroom instruction, teachers, kids. They pay nothing, zero, most teachers for their health benefits. Is there anybody out there in New Jersey and New York, who’s watching this, who pays nothing for their health benefits? It’s just not sustainable.
RUSH: Pow! Pow! He just said, ‘These people are not paying a damn thing for their health benefits. Are any of you not paying anything for yours? We can’t sustain this!’ I love this guy. They’re gonna try to take him out. They are going to try to destroy this guy. He is going to need support. If you’re in New Jersey, he’s gonna need your support. Then yesterday in Berkeley heights, New Jersey, Columbia middle school, Governor Christie held a budget roundtable. Here’s a portion of what he said.
CHRISTIE: You will hear that this means that property taxes are going to go up, what we’re doing. When you hear, ‘This means instruction is going to have to be cut. Teachers are going to have to be laid off,’ take a deep breath. That’s the folks down in Trenton who are trying desperately to hold onto their feeding spot at the trough. We are in an awful circumstance right now of people at 10.1% unemployment; declining property tax revenues, declining sales tax, income tax, business tax revenues. That’s all because of the awful national recession we’re in and because of the awful job we’ve done in New Jersey in terms of overspending, overtaxing, and over-borrowing.
RUSH: Every word is the truth, and these stuck pigs in the New Jersey Democrat Party — the stuck pigs in the Philadelphia and New York media — cannot stand hearing the truth because it’s an indictment of everything they believe. And it properly focuses the blame for this destruction on them, their beliefs, their policies, and their mandates. This morning on Squawk Box on CNBC, the cohost Melissa Lee says to Governor Chris Christie, ‘Manage the expectations of New Jersey. How difficult will things be getting? I mean, there are reports in terms of the municipal bond downgrades. New Jersey has the fastest downgrade out there, debt obligations below investment grade. How do you keep up basic services when you’re trying to stopgap that budget and keep the state going?’
CHRISTIE: We know that we’ve taxed too much.
LEE: Yes.
CHRISTIE: We’ve spend too much, and we borrow too much. The only way to fix that is to stop spending so much. It’s the only way to do it.
LEE: Well, there are other peoples would say, ‘Raise taxes, too.’ Bring in higher revenue and cutting spending. Are you going to have to do both?
CHRISTIE: No. We’re not raising taxes. That’s it. Our income tax when it was established in 1977, at 2.5% top rate, under Governor Corzine was an 11% top rate on income tax. We —
LEE: What about property taxes?
CHRISTIE: Where we’re going —
LEE: There’s no way you’re rising — raising those either?
CHRISTIE: No. We can’t! You know, we had, in the last four years of the Governor Corzine — a study just came out — $70 billion in wealth left the state of New Jersey. And it left it because we are the most overtaxed people in America. We’ve done enough of that already. It is time to get tough and to say ‘no.’
RUSH: You hear now the questions from the media people. I don’t care where they are, CNBC, Eyeball News 5, Eyeball News 6, they’re all right out of the playbook. ‘Well, you’re gonna raise taxes, right?’ He just got through explaining that high taxes have caused $70 billion of wealth to flee the state! High taxes have led to declining revenues in the state of New Jersey. So back to CNBC’s Squawk Box, guest panelist Darden Restaurants CEO Clarence Otis said, ‘Well, what are the big things that went wrong to get you to this point?’
CHRISTIE: An absolute addiction to spending. You know, at the state, county, and municipal level. We spend more on school aid than any state in America per student. We spend more on providing services. We have more government per square mile. We’ve 566 municipalities, all of them are taxing. You just have had an abundance of taxation and everybody always having that same attitude: ‘Well, just raise taxes this time.’ Well, people are now fed up and what’s happening is you’re seeing an enormous flight from our state. So even if you raise tax rates, revenue continues to go down. Governor Corzine raised tax rates last year. Revenue was down by $2 billion.
RUSH: New Jersey is a microcosm of what’s happening in the United States, a microcosm of what’s happened in California. Well, not microcosm. It’s the exact thing. So Clarence Otis, the CEO of Darden Restaurants, ‘Are people ready to see shared services?’
CHRISTIE: The worst thing that we have that we really need to tackle is pension and benefit reform. I gave an example in my speech last week which you all understand. A 49-year-old man who retires, state worker, $24,000 he contributed to his pension, and his health benefits over the course of his career. What does he get? $3.3 million of pension payments and $500,000 in health care costs — $3.8 million on $24,000 investment. Those numbers don’t add up.
RUSH: Now, I should tell you: On CNBC they were gunning for him. They came after this guy with both barrels and he stuck to his guns and gave them what-for. Finally, back to CNBC’s Squawk Box, cohost Becky Quick finally says, ‘You know, when you look back at what’s been happening in the state, happening around the country, though, this big swing where voters have registered the displeasure with how things are going — they’ve done it in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia, across the board on these things — do you think that continues into the 2010 national elections for Congress? Do you think this is something that swings one direction and then comes back towards another? I mean politics tends to bounce back and forth.’
RUSH: This is a philosophical swing and not a partisan swing. I think that’s what we saw in my election in New Jersey. Let’s face it: We have 700,000 more Democrats than Republicans in New Jersey. A Republican hasn’t been elected in 12 years statewide. They were listening to the message. People are saying, ‘I’ve lost my job, my home is being foreclosed on, and you want more taxes from me? Are you kidding?’ That’s what people are saying.
RUSH: And everybody better learn that. Everybody that’s elected and wants to hold onto their seat, wherever it is, had better learn that. There is a genuine contempt for these politicians out there. These people love their country. They are very, very proud of the hard work they’ve put in to have the home and the life that they have, and they’re watching a bunch of elitist politicians destroy it right in front of their eyes. They don’t want any part of this. There is a real, real contempt for these elected officials — and if they don’t understand it now, they will understand it in November.
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RUSH: Here is Linda somewhere in New Jersey. She doesn’t want anybody to know where because she’s going to be disagreeing with a bunch of Democrats there. Great to have you on the program, Linda. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Greetings from New Jersey, mmm, mmm, mmm.
RUSH: (laughing)
CALLER: (laughing) Listen, I am a teacher of the visually impaired, blind, and also an orientation and mobility specialist in New Jersey.
RUSH: Wait a second, now, I know what the visually impaired are. And I know what the blind are, I mean those are Democrats. What is orientation and mobility specialist?
CALLER: That is a person who is trained to work with kids who are blind or visually impaired on their travel skills.
RUSH: Oh.
CALLER: So using a cane, crossing streets, that kind of thing.
RUSH: Gotcha. Okay. Thank you.
CALLER: Okay. So I’m a freelancer, and there are not very many of us in New Jersey. New Jersey educates its blind kids a little bit differently than other states do. In New Jersey, there is a state agency called the Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired out of Trenton that sends out teachers to different school districts to provide Braille instruction and O&M, orientation and mobility instruction, to blind students.
RUSH: Because the other teachers can’t do it?
CALLER: Right. It’s a different certification. It’s a completely different training —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — college experience.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: Other states, school districts will hire their own teachers or O&M people, so they’re a member of the school staff and they’re paid by the school and they’re accountable —
RUSH: Okay, I had to do that when I was in grade school, they had a speech — what was it? What did you call them? It was not speech defect, it was —
CALLER: Therapist?
RUSH: Speech impediment. I had a lisp.
CALLER: Ahhh.
RUSH: When I was a kid, people said, ‘You sound like you need a drain in your mouth.’ My parents sent me off to this speech impediment person, so I know what you’re talking about.
CALLER: So actually O&M is a related service just like speech or occupational therapy or physical therapy.
RUSH: Let me step in here and tell people why you’re calling. The reason she’s calling is because we played an audio sound bite, Democrats in New Jersey opposing budget cuts brought in a 13-year-old blind student to wail against the new governor’s budget cuts saying it’s just not fair, it’s not right, and Republicans don’t care about kids with impairments.
CALLER: I am so outraged at the parents of this student. I may even know them. I didn’t get to hear the clip, I don’t know the student’s name, but —
RUSH: Well, hang on a minute. Let’s find the clip. Hang on just a second. Here’s the clip, and this is from earlier in the program.
FIORENTINO: These budget cuts would directly affect the education of each and every child who deals with a visual challenge. Cutting costs, at all costs, is not going to solve the long-term budget challenges in this great state.
RUSH: That’s the 13-year-old blind child they brought out, the Democrats, the same page of the same playbook that they’ve been using for as long as I’ve been alive.
CALLER: Absolutely. Now, what this student probably doesn’t understand but his parents should if they’re this involved with their child’s education is that cutting the budget, Governor Christie cutting the budget and therefore probably cutting funds from the Commission for the Blind or not increasing funds results in less free services to school districts or very minimal, minimal fee, like a couple thousand dollars a year for services.
RUSH: Right. So you don’t like them using the kids this way, exploiting them basically?
CALLER: They’re exploiting the kid, and the kid doesn’t understand — what the kid is asking for is quality services so that he can be an independent and competent adult, and I agree with him a hundred percent. What I disagree with is that this entitlement that these services should be free or a couple thousand dollars a year. Now, if the parents —
RUSH: Wait a minute, now. Welcome to the people that vote for Democrats. Who do you think created this sense of entitlement the last 50 years? Let’s go back to FDR, shall we? Who created it and guess who’s afraid of tackling it up until now? Republicans, elected Republicans. Well, some of them have been afraid, not all. Linda, thanks very much for the call.