There’s so much wrong in this column from Ezra Klein’s blog at the Washington Post that it’s hard to know where to begin. Ezra is waxing partisan about the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to be President Obama’s head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, trying desperately to find some justification for this unprecedented flouting of the Constitution. But Master Klein plays too fast and loose with the facts, even for a liberal wunderkind.

Let’s try to take them one at a time.

Ezra tries to lay blame for Cordray’s appointment at the feet of Republicans. This is a novel way to show support for a nomination, blaming the other side for its necessity. Unfortunately for Mr. Klein, it has the added disadvantage of being completely wrong.

“Yet in the current Congress, Republicans have been intentionally organizing “pro forma” sessions during their breaks so as to avoid recesses from technically taking place.”

Republicans have not been organizing pro forma sessions of the Senate. The Senate is controlled by Democrats. Republicans have no ability to organize a game of bridge in the Senate let alone an official session even if they wanted to. Would that they could because it would be pretty easy to get Republican proposals enacted by unanimous consent, wouldn’t it? Now, Ezra may be referring to the Republican-led House refusal to sanction a Senate recess of longer than three days (a point which we’ll get to later), but I doubt it. It is an undeniable fact that the pro forma sessions of the Senate are a creature of Harry Reid’s (D-NV) mind, and have been since President George W. Bush legally recess appointed John Bolton to serve as UN Ambassador.

Klein soldiers on, and along the way gets a bit confused about how long Congress lasts.

“As a side bonus, recess-appointing Cordray now rather than yesterday means his appointment will last through the end of 2013, rather than through the end of 2012.”

Wrong again. Recess appointments, when they are done legally, can only last until the end of the current session of the Senate, which coincides with the end of a Congress. Congresses last two years and are punctuated by a big national election. Klein may have forgotten that there is a big national election coming up later this year. So as we can see, this Congress, this Senate session, and Cordray’s “term” will end at the end of 2012 – if it lasts that long – not 2013.

Having made a mess of this column already, and perhaps realizing that he is floundering, Klein decides to spread the wealth around by appealing to an expert for backup. But Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University (interesting that Klein does not find a Constitutional Law scholar, but a political one), isn’t much help. Ms. Binder is as confused about the Constitution’s provisions on Congressional recesses as Ezra is.

“The practice of recess appointments has mainly worked off precedent, particularly a 1993 Justice Department memo suggesting that Congress has to be in recess for longer than three days before an appointment can be made. “But there’s no constitutional source to go back to,” says Binder”

Get better experts, Ezra. There is a Constitutional source, as alluded to earlier. One can certainly get why Klein missed it, since the Constitution is over a hundred years old and all, but Binder has no excuse. In fact, the 1993 memo Klein cites is based on the Constitution’s provision in Article 1, Section 5, clause 4, otherwise known as the Adjournments clause.

The clause states that neither house may adjourn for longer than three days without the consent of the other. The 1993 Clinton Justice Department very responsibly based its analysis of the recess appointment power on that clause instead of making up a precedent out of whole cloth as this White House has now done.

Even for Ezra Klein, this is embarrassing. Ezra has a job to do that involves carrying the president’s water, but this many mistakes can’t be tolerated by an allegedly serious journalistic institution like the Post. It may be a while before young Mr. Klein gives any Constitutional law lectures to Democrat staffers on Capitol Hill.

Update: Klein responded via twitter that the post in question was actually written by Brad Plumer. While I find Ezra’s use of the Ron Paul newsletter defense interesting, I must point out that Klein himself echoes all of the erroneous points made by Plumer in the first paragraph of this post, which he did write, therefore claiming them as his own. I stand by my article until Mr. Klein retracts Plumer’s post and corrects his own.

Republicans are on the right side of the argument in principle and are in line with the political mood in the country.  As evidenced by their overwhelming victory in November, Americans want Congress to cut federal spending.  Republicans campaigned on it, and the voters expect them to keep their promises.

So why, then, do polls like this one from Gallup show that 6 in 10 Americans do not favor a government “shutdown” in lieu of an agreement to cut spending?  The answer is in the framing.  Republicans can’t win a debate with liberals by accepting their use of terms.  What is needed is a way to frame the debate on spending in a way that more accurately reflects what will really happen on Friday at midnight if the government “shuts down.”

Republicans will lose the argument over a government “shutdown” every time so long as they go along in calling it a “shutdown.”  Republicans in the House leadership have bent over backwards recently to assure the public that a “shutdown” is not the goal of their pursuit of spending cuts.  That’s fighting a rear guard action.  If Republicans want to win the debate on spending, they have to go on offense and change the terms of the argument.

There have been seventeen government “shutdowns” since 1977.  This makes it hardly a novel event.  There is even a process for implementing one spelled out in an Office of Management and Budget memorandum dating back to 1980.  When the government “shuts down,” non-essential federal employees are furloughed until a budget or funding agreement is in place.  The federal government will not actually shut down.  Only non-essential functions of government will cease for as long as it takes to for the parties to come to an agreement.  Essential services continue.  According to a Congressional Research Service report (PDF) the OMB defines essential services as:

—activities essential to ensure continued public health and safety, including safe use of food, drugs, and hazardous materials;
—continuance of air traffic control and other transportation safety functions and the protection of transport property;
—border and coastal protection and surveillance;
—protection of federal lands, buildings, waterways, equipment and other property owned by the United States;
—care of prisoners and other persons in the custody of the United States;
—law enforcement and criminal investigations;
—emergency and disaster assistance;
—activities that ensure production of power and maintenance of the power distribution system;
—activities essential to the preservation of the essential elements of the money and banking system of the United States, including borrowing and tax collection activities of the Treasury; and
—activities necessary to maintain protection of research property.

That’s a whole lot of government for a “shutdown,” and that list doesn’t include defense, intelligence, and other national security agencies and operations, which would also continue unabated.

Rather than buy into the Democrats’ framing of the issue, which essentially paints the choice as one between spending or chaos, Republicans need to stress all that would not happen in the event that a funding deal is not reached.  Republicans and their supporters should use the term “essential operations mode” to describe the result of their principled objection to continuing perversely high federal spending levels.

For example:

“If the House and Senate cannot reach an agreement on spending levels, the government will go into essential operations mode beginning at midnight on Saturday.”

This frame more correctly describes what will actually happen: Social Security checks will continue to be delivered; the Armed Forces worldwide will remain on station; planes will take off and land; monies will continue to come in to the Treasury; jails will remain locked; and banks will be open.

Moreover, the essential operations mode frame places the focus on all of the functions of the federal government that are by definition not essential: the EPA; the Department of Education; HUD, an alphabet soup of federal boards and commissions; and the like. Arguing in this way would make it very difficult for Democrats and their media enablers to throw around the usual and odious charges that Republicans want to starve seniors, foul the air and water, and bring back the horse and buggy.

Proof that this framing works is seen in a Rasmussen Reports poll that found nearly 6 in 10 likely voters favor a “partial government shutdown” over funding the government at last year’s level.  Critics of the Rasmussen result attack the poll for the framing of the question, and hold up the Gallup poll’s result as the true measure of the public’s sentiment on the question.  Gallup’s question, however, does not accurately describe the issue, offering respondents a choice of a “government shutdown” – total – or budget compromise.

Republicans won the election campaigning confidently on cutting government spending.  Now, in order to win the battle of the budget, they need to regain that confidence and go on the offensive.  They must argue from strength and not lend credibility to Democrats’ arguments by accepting their terms.  ”Essential operations mode” should be the new “shutdown.”  Pass it on.

The unrest in Egypt is easily the most critical international crisis of the Obama Administration, and by all accounts the president is not handling it well.  His ambiguous and overly cautious statements on the popular uprising in that crucial Middle East nation have managed only to alienate both the pro-democracy protesters and the pro-regime forces from America, opening the door for truly radical elements like the Muslim Brotherhood to potentially exploit the chaos and seize power.

Hosni Mubarak has ruled Egypt by emergency powers for nearly thirty years.  Mubarak’s chief value to the United States lies in the continuation of his predecessor Anwar Sadat’s peace with Israel, for which he collects $1.5 billion annually in American aid to prop up his government, close military cooperation for the forces that keep him in power, and the legitimacy that comes with being a “key” U.S. ally.  In return, the United States has received “stability” in a vital region – a benefit that looks far less valuable in light of the events of the past two weeks.

President Obama’s initial instinct was to support Mubarak over the protesters.  At the outset of the unrest, Vice President Biden refused to label Mubarak a “dictator,” and early Administration pronouncements on the situation stressed Egypt’s important role in maintaining peace in the Middle East.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissed the protests entirely early on, declaring Egypt’s government to be “stable.”

This early support for the regime, however tepid, enabled Mubarak to hold on to power at the most critical juncture.  Moreover, the Administration’s decision not to come down squarely on the side of the people against an autocratic government led directly to the violence visited on the protesters by government-organized gangs of regime supporters this week.  The White House’s condemnation of the violence and call for an, “orderly transition,” have been completely ignored.

Some might chalk up President Obama’s hesitancy in embracing the protests to inexperience or the gravity of the situation.  However, the Obama Administration’s response to events in Egypt follows along the same lines as its responses to two other uprisings that have occurred on its watch:  Honduras and Iran.  In each case, President Obama chose to side with a dictatorship over its democratic resistance.

In Honduras, the uprising came from within the legitimately elected government against a president bent on remaking the country in the mold of Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.  The army, acting on orders from the Supreme Court, arrested then President Zelaya before he could stage a sham referendum on his continuation in office in violation of the Honduran constitution.  The Obama Administration labeled the events a coup and demanded Zelaya’s reinstatement, thereby aligning the United States with the Western Hemisphere’s three notorious dictators:  Chavez, Cuba’s Raul Castro, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega; against the democratic aspirations of the Honduran people.

More analogous to the current situation in Egypt is the Green Revolution that took place in Iran in the wake of the disputed presidential elections of 2009.  Iranian opposition parties declared the elections stolen and poured into the streets in defiance of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime.

After initially seeking to credit President Obama’s much-ballyhooed Cairo address to the Muslim world for the uprising, the Administration pulled back, refusing to judge the conduct of the elections or even to condemn the Islamist regime’s brutal crackdown on the demonstrators.  Obama spokesman Bill Burton dealt the death blow to the revolution, coldly saying that the United States would recognize whomever the regime certified as the winner of the election.  “We’re going to take whatever leadership there is…and that means dealing with the Iran that we’ve got, and not the Iran we wish we had,” Burton said.

The Obama Administration missed a once-in-a-generation opportunity to destabilize and perhaps topple the Iranian regime, the world’s foremost sponsor of Islamic terrorism and the source of much of the region’s instability because it could not bring itself to call the Iranian regime illegitimate.  Yet it was quick to cast the legitimate Honduran government as a renegade actor.  In both instances, the Administration sought to uphold the status quo.  Now in Egypt, the Administration has again squandered a chance to foster good will in a populous Middle Eastern nation.

Because of the Obama Administration’s inability or unwillingness to take a principled stand for democracy, America will receive no credit if Egyptian revolution ends in a new more democratic government. On the contrary, it may well receive blame if Mubarak’s crackdown succeeds in breaking the will of the people.  Either way, America’s standing in the world will be diminished. Apparently, change stops at the water’s edge.

Originally published at The Daily Caller.

Pageantry, tradition, and protocol all play a big part in the annual State of the Union address.  They are the reason that the speech is like no other in American political life.  In recent years, another equally important element has joined those three: atmospherics.  The success of a State of the Union can be judged in no small way by the reaction the speech generates in the House chamber.  The ritual standing for applause and approval – or remaining seated to express disapproval – by the assembled legislators acts as the first snap poll of the speech’s overall effectiveness.

In every other year in memory, the Congressional audience for a State of the Union sat segregated by party, mixed by house, astride the central aisle of the House chamber.  This year, led by young, eager, and inexperienced Democrats in the Senate, many lawmakers decided to break with this tradition and sat intermixed, Republican and Democrat, lion and lamb, together.

It was intended as a show of unity in the face of the evil of the Tucson shootings two weeks ago.  More cynical commentators smelled a plot to dilute the effect of the November elections, by obscuring the size of the Republican opposition in the new House.  Whatever the purpose, it now seems clear that the Democrats’ bi-partisan sit in was too clever by a half.  The seating arrangement contributed to an uncharacteristically restrained audience for the speech, which when combined with a lackluster performance from the president, ended up killing one of President Obama’s best chances to make the case for his agenda.

The Huffington Post and Associated Press noticed.  A review of the speech laments, “On a night typically known for its political theater, the lawmakers sometimes seemed subdued, as if still in the shadow of the Arizona shootings…There was less of the see-saw applause typical of State of the Union speeches in years past, where Democrats stood to applaud certain lines and Republicans embraced others.”

The numbers bear this out.  Not counting jokes and references to specific people in attendance, such as the president’s congratulatory words for House Speaker John Boehner, President Obama was interrupted for applause seventy times on Tuesday according to the White House transcript.  Last year, the White House noted more than 100 interruptions during the State of the Union.  And while according to the Washington Post the president spoke about ten minutes less this year than last, many commentators said that this year’s speech seemed to them to be too long.  That’s a product of the relatively dim reception that greeted the president’s words.

Could the seating arrangements really have made that much of a difference in the lack of applause?  It could.  Ironically, the reason may be what Democrats have been complaining about as lacking from the nation’s (read their opponents’) political discourse ever since the Tucson shootings:  civility.

Politicians, like people, tend to act differently in like-minded groups than they otherwise would act in mixed company, as anyone who has ever attended a dinner party at a friend’s house knows.  The rules of civility demand that one avoid doing anything to deliberately offend his host or his fellow guests.  Certain subjects are considered taboo in polite conversation, and a myriad of rules of etiquette govern everything from what one wears, to how one eats.

This mixed company affect was on full display during the State of the Union.  President Obama received almost no rousing standing ovations for any of his policy proposals or ideological statements.  Imagine the raucous applause with which a Democrats-only bloc would have greeted the president’s assertion that the nations could not afford a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts.  Or consider how a Republican section would have jumped to its feet to embrace the president’s call for lowering the corporate income tax rate.  Instead, these and most of the president’s initiatives received only polite applause, totally in keeping with the dinner party rules.

As a result, the speech seemed flat, and will almost certainly go down as a mostly forgettable address.  Of course, this may have been true anyway given the times the country is in and the relatively milquetoast agenda the president put forward.  But in trying to score cheap political points against Republicans, Democrats may have, civilly, shot themselves in the foot.

Originally published in The Daily Caller.

In a statement released last Monday, Park 51 said that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife Daisy Khan would be focusing their attention on nationwide speaking tour in support of Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative.

“Due to the fact that Imam Feisal is focusing most of his energies and passion on launching this new and separate initiative, it is important that the needs of Park51, the Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan, take precedence…Our focus is and must remain the residents of Lower Manhattan and the Muslim American community in the Greater New York area. It is important to note though that while on tour and afterward Imam Feisal and Daisy Khan will not be speaking on behalf of Park51, nor will they be raising funds for the project.”

Rauf will remain on the board of Park51, but the developers appointed Imam Abdullah Adhami to serve as Senior Advisor to the project to help create, “a robust and dynamic religious and interfaith component.”

“This is an extraordinary opportunity to be a key advisor on a project going forward that has enormous creative and healing potential for the collective good in New York City and in our nation,” Adhami said in the statement.

But critics of the mosque do not share Adhami’s belief in the healing potential of the mosque project, much less in his ability to help bring it to fruition.

They point to Adhami’s connection to Imam Siraj Wahhaj of Brooklyn.  Adhami, who holds a degree in architecture, volunteered to help design Wahhaj’s Masjid At-Taqwa mosque, and fetes him on his personal website as a “pioneer in the American Muslim experience.”  “Since the 1970s, Imam Siraj has tirelessly laid the foundations for many scholars and leaders that would follow him,” Adhami writes.

One of the “scholars” for whom Wahhaj laid foundations in the U.S. was Shiekh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the infamous “blind sheikh” and mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.  Abdel-Rahman spent time in prison in Egypt in the early 1980s on charges that he had issued a “fatwa,” or religious decree, calling for the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.  He was also known to have ties to the terrorist groups Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, serving as the leader of the second group.  Abdel-Rahman appeared on a State Department terrorist watch list before gaining entry to the United States in 1990.

Despite his history of involvement in terrorism and terrorist causes, Wahhaj sponsored lectures by Abdel-Rahman in mosques in New York and New Jersey.  Those lectures helped gather a core of supporters for the blind sheikh in Jersey City, from where the World Trade Center bombing was planned and executed.  Abdel-Rahman and nine co-conspirators were convicted on charges of seditious conspiracy in 1995 for their role in the bombing and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Wahhaj himself is not without a controversial past.  Jihad Watch director and HUMAN EVENTS contributor Robert Spencer reported in 2008 that Wahhaj has advocated for an Islamization of America, calling for a kind of Muslim overthrow of the United States.

“[H]e has also warned that the United States will fall unless it “accepts the Islamic agenda.” He has lamented that “if only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate,” Spencer wrote.

Some reports have said that Wahhaj was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing.  But in an e-mail, former Assistant United States Attorney and Senior Fellow at the National Review Institute Andrew C. McCarthy, who led the prosecution of Abdel-Rahman and his co-conspirators, says Wahhaj was not labeled a co-conspirator during the trial.  McCarthy did say that Wahhaj’s radical views made him an “Islamist” although not necessarily a terrorist.

“Mr. Wahhaj’s views have been well known for many years, including his assertion that he would like to see the U.S. Constitution replaced by an Islamic caliphate — i.e., replaced by a sharia system. Obviously, he is an Islamist…My personal opinion is that it is radical to want to see the U.S. political system replaced by the Islamic system, but I want to be clear that not all such radicals are terrorists (in fact, most are not).”

Although McCarthy stated that he knew nothing of Adhami’s views, and did not recall his name coming up during Abdel-Rahman’s trial, he was not heartened by Adhami’s support for the mosque project.

“The Ground Zero Mosque is a terrible idea…the concept is galactically insensitive to the American people who were attacked on 9/11 and especially to the families of those killed and wounded.  Moreover…the project would be taken as a victory monument by America’s enemies, only encouraging more terrorism. This is not an issue of tolerance — there are thousands of mosques in the U.S., and hundreds in the New York area.  If Mr. Adhami favors this project, it would not surprise me to learn that he is affiliated with people who want to turn the U.S. into a sharia society.”

Published reports have speculated that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s abrupt departure from the Park 51 project was the result of internal disagreements between the developers and the controversial imam.  If those disagreements were in any way related to last fall’s controversy over the mosque, however, Park 51 appears not to have done the project any favors with the selection of Adhami as his replacement.  With no election looming, Adhami’s selection may not generate the level of controversy that was witnessed prior to November, but it will almost surely refocus public attention on the project, which had largely dropped out of the public consciousness for most of the past three months.

Originally published at Human Events.

As if all that isn’t enough, Mr. Moran bases his baseless conclusions on an internal contradiction so glaringly obvious even a liberal Star-Ledger columnist should be able to spot it.

In comments on his editorial, however, Moran says critics shouldn’t focus on him in addressing the claims he makes, but should instead seek to refute the arguments.  He’s pretty confident that it can’t be done.

“How about this crazy idea: Let’s assume our fellow citizens are acting in good faith, let’s stop attacking motives and instead address the argument.

Haven’t heard anyone dispute the heart of the argument. And how could you? [...] These are facts, unrefuted.”

That sounds like a Tuscon Challenge™, Mr. Moran.  So here goes, civilly, one at a time.

First a little background.  Mr. Moran has been in the vanguard of the hand-wringers brigade in New Jersey that has been taking after Gov. Christie for his “confrontational tone” almost since the day he took office.  At a press conference last May during which Christie rejected the Democrats’ plan to reinstate a surtax on high income earners, Moran was on the business end of a pretty thorough rebuke from Christie on the subject of tone. Watch here:

That clip was one of many that would win Gov. Christie praise from conservatives and attention from the press nationwide, leaving Moran with more than a little bit of egg on his face.

Moran claims that Christie has been misleading in claiming that his fiscal year budget cut $11 billion from the state budget.  ”[I]t’s a myth. He cut $2.7 billion,” Moran writes.  As evidence, he cites a recent quote from Christie on the Imus radio program in which the governor says:

“It was an $11 billion budget deficit on a $29 billion budget my buddy Jon Corzine left me, and we fixed it.”

Notice what is not contained in that quote.  Nowhere does the governor claim that he cut $11 billion from the budget.  He only asserts that his budget “fixed” the $11 billion deficit problem.

Mr. Moran must have known that the quote was flimsy evidence because he tries to cover for it by alleging that Christie is responsible for shoddy reporting on his budget cuts, rather than the news organizations themselves.  Moran inexplicably faults Christie for a 60 Minutes report that said he cut the state’s budget by 26%.  The actual figure is 9%, and Christie has never claimed otherwise.  Just last week in his first State of the State address to the New Jersey Legislature, the governor cited the correct figure.

Christie said his fiscal 2011 budget, enacted with only minor changes by the Democratic legislature last June, had reduced spending by 9 percent from the prior year, closing a projected $11 billion deficit without raising taxes. The budget accomplished this by making cuts – some as much as 39 percent – in every department in state government. It also contained cuts of more than $445 million in aid to municipalities and $800 million in state aid to schools on top of $475 million in education spending that was withheld from the prior year.

Moran tries to get around Christie’s budget balancing prowess by explaining that the $11 billion budget deficit estimate is not what it seems.

“[H]ere’s the skinny: Every year, the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services estimates the cost of fully funding every state program — all pension payments, all property tax rebates, all school funding, etc.

No governor ever does that. The purpose of this exercise is to establish a starting point for the budget tug-of-war.”

Remember that point, that the OLS budget number is essentially a worst case scenario, because Moran almost immediately forgets it, and it gets him tied up in knots.  Before his big finish, however, Moran makes one more errant charge about Christie’s budget cutting prowess.  Only this time, he winds up indicting prior Democratic administrations as well.

Moran correctly notes that New Jersey’s budget is in dire straits in large part to unfunded liabilities in the public employees’ pension system – some $54 billion this year.  Moran says that the pension’s impact on the bottom line has worsened, “partly because Christie skipped the $3 billion payment that was due this year.”  So far, so good.

But Moran leaves out two important points.  He fails to mention that New Jersey governors have failed to make full contributions to the pension system for most of the past ten years, which would include the entire tenures of Christie’s Democratic predecessors Jim McGreevy and Jon Corzine; and he conveniently forgets to factor in the effect of generous pension benefit increases given to the state’s public sector unions by previous administrations.  Christie, in fact, has called on the Democratic controlled legislature to rescind a 9% pension increase granted by Republicans in 2001 as part of a package of reforms to the system.

Moran now makes his closing argument.  He says that the ultimate proof that Christie’s budget cuts aren’t all that the governor or the press has made them out to be is seen in the estimated budget deficit for fiscal year 2012.  That estimate is $10.5 billion, “nearly as bad as this year’s,” he says.  But the estimated budget deficit Moran cites comes from the very same OLS that he earlier said produced the mythical $11 billion deficit estimate for fiscal 2011.  Indeed in the very sentence preceding his close, Moran calls the $11 billion figure “theoretical.”

Moran is unashamedly trying to have it both ways in this editorial.  Either the estimated budget deficits for 2011 and 2012 are real or they are not.  He cannot claim that Christie’s work to close the 2011 budget hole is as meaningless as the number it is based on, then offer as proof the very same number from the very same source.

Furthermore, Moran’s criticism is completely irrelevant since Gov. Christie already addressed the OLS estimate for 2012.  Christie said that the calculation was “fake,” and pledged not to reinstate cuts that were made last year.

“[The estimate comes from] a mindset that says, ‘We’re going to build back all the cuts the governor made this year, and we’re going to then give it the hands-off-the-wheel enhancement,’” Christie said. “The number is completely fake, and doesn’t understand the new reality, which is I’m not going to approve spending that goes over [last year].”

“The new bar is set. The place to reduce from is where we are now,” Christie said.

If Moran wanted to be honest, he would have acknowledged the governor’s comments on the OLS estimate.  It seems clear, however, that Moran has no interest in honest criticism.  What he wants to do is cast accusations at Christie in the vain hope that they will somehow cause the governor to pursue policies that Moran finds more acceptable.  One might even say that Moran has adopted a “confrontational” tone on this issue.

Mr. Moran, consider yourself refudiated.  The ball is in your court.

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly claimed that former governor Jon Corzine and the Democratic legislature granted a 9% increase in pension benefits. That increase was granted by a Republican legislature and governor in 2001.

Democrats have not reacted well to the “shellacking” voters administered to the party at the polls earlier this month. Far from doing any soul searching or introspection of any kind, Democrats embarked on a campaign to vindicate their leaders, reelecting Nancy Pelosi to head their now minority House caucus and Harry Reid to lead a reduced Senate contingent.

The leadership brooked no second-guessing of Democrats’ electoral strategy, either, declaring that the message was good and only the party’s delivery was flawed. They consoled themselves in the voters’ inability to understand just how wonderful four years of Democratic control of Congress had been, and rued their failure…no, their incomplete explanation of the benefits of another two years with Pelosi as speaker.

Democrats’ refusal to spend any time in the wilderness, indeed in their refusal to acknowledge the existence of a wilderness, has not served them well as they struggle to gain a foothold from which to spring back to power. The lame-duck session of Congress thus far has resulted in no legislative accomplishments: no deal on extending the Bush tax cuts, no talk of spending cuts, no incentives to create jobs, nothing to acknowledge the voters’ anger and frustration at the way Democrats have run the government.

Instead, the Democrats have wasted time dreaming of bills that will not pass and would enrage most of the country if they did. These bills include the aptly named Dream Act, which would create a backdoor amnesty for young illegal immigrants; an omnibus spending bill, no doubt festooned like a Christmas tree with pork-barrel spending projects; and a new START arms reduction treaty with Russia – that nobody outside the White House seems to want or think is important – which will certainly not create jobs.

On the political side, Democrats have not fared much better. In their first post-election coordinated assault, Democrats and their union hangers-on have taken to haranguing Republican opponents of Obamacare – the passage of which is likely the single biggest reason Democrats will find themselves in the minority next year. New York Representative Joseph Crowley and 60 Democrats sent a letter to the GOP leadership in both houses preemptively calling any member that opposed or campaigned against the government takeover of health care a hypocrite if that member signs up for the Congressional health care plan.

“If your conference wants to deny millions of Americans affordable health care, your members should walk that walk. You cannot enroll in the very kind of coverage that you want for yourselves, and then turn around and deny it to Americans who don’t happen to be Members of Congress.”

This argument is exactly the kind of rank demagoguery that Americans turned out in droves to vote against on November 2nd. It has the added benefit of being completely inane. It is rooted in the fundamental belief that voters are too stupid to know the difference between government run health care and government provided health insurance.

The federal government, as an employer, pays a premium to third-party providers for health care plans to cover members of Congress. The government does not provide the actual care, or make the decisions about coverage. It buys a market-based product, and makes it available to its employees and their families. What’s more, Congressmen pay up to twenty-five percent of the premium for the coverage they choose.

Acceptance of this job benefit by Republican legislators is no more an acceptance of the principle of government run health care than is acceptance of government censorship by people who check books out from government run libraries. Would AFSCME, which joined Democrats in this ridiculous line of attack, demand that its members renounce their employer-based coverage if they voted Republican? Should supporters of First Amendment rights turn in their library cards? Nonsense.

Of course, Republicans’ votes against Obamacare were actually votes in favor of retaining employer-based health care coverage. Democrats know this. Republicans are entirely consistent in signing their families up for whichever health insurance plan they wish. Rather, as is often the case, it is the Democrats who are tainted with the hypocrisy with which they accuse their opponents. If single-payer, government run health care is so much better, Democrat congressmen that support it should show some leadership themselves and renounce their coverage under the federal health benefits plan.

But by far the worst feature of this new Democratic push is that it isn’t even new. Factcheck.org debunked this particular attack in 2009. Democrats might have known this too, if instead of rushing headlong to prop up the leaders who had brought them electoral disaster they had taken a short walk in the wilderness.

Cross posted at Human Events.

Debra Burlingame, spoke exclusively to RedState in reaction to President Obama’s comment that America could “absorb” another terrorist attack.  Ms. Burlingame is co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America and the sister of hijacked American Airlines flight 77 pilot Charles Burlingame.

RedState asked Ms. Burlingame to respond to comments reported by celebrity Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in his forthcoming book, “Obama’s Wars.”  On the possibility of another terrorist attack in the United States, the president said:

“I said very early on, as a Senator and continue to believe, as a presidential candidate and now as president, that we can absorb a terrorist attack. We will do everything we can to prevent it. but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever, that ever took place on our soil, we absorbed it, and we are stronger. This is a strong, powerful country that we live in, and our people are incredibly resilient.”

Ms. Burlingame said that the comments were inappropriate.

“The first thing I see are the three thousand families who probalby wouldn’t think we absorbed it that well. The first ones I think of are the four children on my brother’s plane. I think of the Falkenberg family, who lost four people: a husband, wife, and two children.  The three year old was so little, the family received no remains. Those are details that can be multiplied by the tens of thousands of people who were impacted by 9/11, probably hundreds of thousands if you include the rescue personnel.

Ms. Burlingame continued:

“[These comments come after] almost two years of President Obama ignoring the harsh realities of 9/11.  Think of Fort Hood…he stood there within days of that attack and called it unimaginable. Unimaginable. That’s what he said. I wonder if those families think we absorbed that attack very well?

Asked if the remarks fit a pattern of bloodless language from President Obama about the impact of the attacks that demonstrates a lack of understanding of what the victims’ families have gone through for the past nine years, Ms. Burlingame said the remarks spoke to a much greater danger.

“He has no idea of what families have gone through. I don’t know the context of the remarks.  9/11 is bigger than any one victim.  It’s bigger really than any one plane crash. It’s not for nothing that FBI Director Muller, Secretary Napolitano and CIA chief Panetta told us that we are in much greater danger of coordinated attack now than we were on Jan 20, 2009.  He doesn’t have a team in place that can stop one guy getting on the plane in the Netherlands with explosives in his underwear.

The American people are certainly resilient, but that doesn’t mean they want to be sitting ducks.

I wonder about an attack more catastrophic than 9/11. This is a president who refuses to give this war a name. Who refuses to acknowledge who the enemy is. He would rather launch predator strikes on people who can give us intelligence than have aggressive interrogations.

This is a President who thinks in political terms rather than in terms of leadership.  And I think it is ironic that this is the same president who said we must have a 15 story mosque at Ground Zero where he thinks we absorbed the attacks so well.

Lastly, Ms. Burlingame said that President Obama is not doing enough in the was on terror. Asked if she thought al-Qaeda terrorists would care about the context of the remarks, or read them as a dare, she remembered a famous declaration of a former president.

“President Bush was criticized for saying ‘Bring ‘em on!’ early in the war.  He was saying Amer people are tough. This was President Obama saying that we can sustain an attack and handle it really well.

The difference in those two comments is Bush was a president who was putting every tool he had in his arsenal into the fight against the enemy. This is a president who has said we have to Mirandize terrorists on the battlefield. This is a president who dismantled Guantanamo, who is not prosecuting  the 9/11 conspirators because of politics.

What is that saying to our enemy? It’s saying he is weak and not throwing everything he has into the fight and saying that those of us on the ground will be the ones to pick up the pieces.  I’d be more forgiving about this if I thought he was throwing everything he had at this enemy.  Obama says he doesn’t want a generational war. He’s going to get ten times a generational war if he continues with his timid policy of appeasement.  And the American people are just going to have to take their licks.”

Americans have largely forgotten about Iraq and have long since tired of hearing about it.  That is in large part a reflection of our troops’ success in reducing the violence and producing a stable enough situation for a government to stand up, albeit slowly.

For this reason, Obama’s speech marking the end of combat operations in Iraq will play well with the public. In truth the speech was not so much a wrap up of the war in Iraq as it was a “Like-you-I-am-tired-of-hearing-about-Iraq-so-let’s-just-declare-it-over-and-move-on-to-things-I-care-much-more-about” speech. That much is evidenced by what the speech did not contain.

• Context: Neither the name Saddam Hussein nor any reference to his history of brutality toward his people and his neighbors was mentioned, let alone his coddling of terrorists and his history of making threats aimed at the United States.

• Accomplishments: This was a speech devoid of statistics. Did US troops build any schools? Fix any roads? Treat any Iraqi children? Restore any power? Do anything other than get wounded and die? One wouldn’t know it from the president’s text.

People who don’t generally pay too much attention to politics at this time of the year will hear about this speech (Iraq war over!), breathe a sigh of relief, remember that it was Obama who ended it, and move on with their lives. Ultimately, that will not redound much to Democrats’ benefit in November, because this election is not about national security.  On the contrary, Democrats will not be made to answer for their feckless political opportunism on Iraq unless something else happens.

That is why a Republican push for a declaration of Victory in Iraq and an accompanying national celebration is so important.

A united Republican push to celebrate America’s unquestionable victory in Iraq would counter the narrative that the war just faded away. Rather, it ended with a qualitative result: a spectacular victory for America in the face of long odds and complete vindication for the leaders who decided to stick it out instead of tuck tail and run when Democrats wanted to.

It would also force the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats to put some action behind their platitudes on the war.  Obama can say that the troops performed magnificently and wax eloquent about their sacrifice if he knows he won’t have to actually do anything to honor them.  Similarly, Democrats can bask in the glow of ending the war they all opposed if they don’t have to face a choice about what that end means, victory or disgrace.

Calling on Obama and the Democrats to put some meaning behind their words by supporting a victory parade or some such national celebration (for which monies have been authorized in at least one of the Iraq War supplementals) will force every Democrat to either admit President George W. Bush and Republicans were right all along about invading Iraq and sticking it out there, or diminish the troops’ achievement and their sacrifice.

Democrats will choose the latter, and was evident in Obama’s speech.  He simply could not talk about the war without mentioning our standing in the world allegedly suffering and our unity as a people allegedly coming under strain.

These are the arguments Democrats will make if Republicans force them to come out from behind their rhetorical defenses.  And that will hurt them in November. Because as much as Americans may have tired of Iraq, they won’t want to vote for politicians who won’t take a victory when it’s handed to them, choosing instead to run down America and her brave and selfless troops.

“Regarding the former, he sounds like John McCain three years ago. ‘Commonsense path to citizenship.’ Regarding the latter, the cost of joining with the other states in challenging the health care monstrosity is minimal. That’s a poor excuse.”

Democrats and the left in New Jersey are throwing absolutely everything they can at Christie to try and blunt some of the momentum America’s Best Governor™ has been rolling up at their expense.  Remember Momentum [p] = Mass [m] X Velocity [v].  So with Christie’s considerable mass*, Dems are going to have to use a lot of force to slow him down. With all due respect to Mark Levin, our side shouldn’t be helping.

* We kid, governor. We kid because we love.

This week, Democrats produced a bogus report on next year’s budget situation, 11 months out, that claims the budget gap next year will be almost as large as this year’s $11 billion.  But the report assumes that Christie will allow all the funding he cut this year to be reinstated next year, plus allow for additional spending in each program.  Christie is calling BS.

“The new bar is set. The place to reduce from is where we are now,” he says, essentially telling Democrats to go pound sand. McCain? Hardly.

Democrats are also trying to claim that Christie balanced the budget by increasing taxes, calling a 3-quarter delay in property tax rebates a tax increase, since the promised yearly checks won’t be coming out in September.  Again, Christie says hogwash.

“First, we changed it from a property tax rebate program to a direct credit. We spent about $20 million a year in processing these checks and borrowing the money to send out to people. We’ve eliminated that.

And what we did was we skipped three-quarters of that payment in the current fiscal year as part of the shared sacrifice that everybody was going to have to make. I wasn’t going to cut just programs for the vulnerable; I wasn’t going to cut just programs for the rich, but programs for the middle class. Everything had to be cut.

But that program will be back as a direct tax credit in the fourth quarter of fiscal ’11.”

It’s as easy as swatting flies.

But the coup de grace is this attack from former governor Corzine’s running mate criticizing Christie’s communications shop for publicizing the appearances of Christie and Lt. Governor Guadagno at “partisan fundraisers.”

Weinberg said that formal notice that the Governor or Lieutenant Governor would be attending a fund raiser makes it a more attractive event for prospective contributors. Since the notification of the event is going out through the Communications Office’s official e-mail list, she raised the question of whether such use violates [Election Law Enforcement Commission] rules as an unreported in-kind contribution [!] to the sponsoring organization.

“The Governor’s press staff needs to decide whether they are working to promote their boss’s public policy initiatives or partisan fund raising activities,” said Weinberg (D-Bergen). “Promoting a fund raiser through an official governmental e-mail appears to fly in the face of established ethics rules.

Desperation, thy name is Loretta Weinberg.

Christie’s answers on immigration and Obamacare are only disappointing in light of the aggressive way in which he has taken on Democrats and their special interest friends in his first six months in office.  In other words, he’s a victim of his own success.

On immigration, Christie didn’t say anything that would preclude him coming out strong for securing the border before any discussions on “paths to citizenship.”  And he didn’t hint at what the path should be.  He could clarify that illegals would have to return home and get in line, for example.  On Obamacare, Christie said he hasn’t decided to commit state money to fighting what will surely be a year’s-long legal battle without a judgment on the likely result.  That’s not cowardice, it’s good stewardship that doesn’t come close to an endorsement of the bill.

Christie is a remarkably intelligent, sharp, and polished politician for a relative newcomer.  He is confident and unafraid. He clearly went into that interview determined to avoid any question with a hint of national implications.  It’s not in his or New Jersey’s interest right now for the governor to play up any national aspirations he may have.  Christie as governor has shown no inclination to back down from a challenge.  He didn’t go wobbly all of a sudden under Jake Tapper’s questioning.

As evidenced by their increasingly desperate and far-reaching attacks, Christie has Democrats, unions, and entrenched liberal interests in New Jersey right where he wants them.  Christie’s governorship is a boulder rolling downhill.  Democrats see the boulder coming, but they’re rooted to the ground.  Our side should just leave him alone and let Christie keep rolling.  The last thing we conservatives need to do is throw Democrats a rope by nitpicking Christie’s every word on this issue or that; at least not until he has flattened New Jersey’s Democrats.

The problem seems to be in Obama’s priorities, as the word count shows. This was not a speech about the oil spill, the aftermath, or recovery in the Gulf. It was largely a sales pitch for Obama’s “green energy” agenda.

Obama spoke close to 2,700 words in his first Oval Office address, which can be separated into four broad themes: an update the oil spill and clean up efforts; the impact on the Gulf region; a history of regulatory ineffectiveness (Bush bashing); and the case for his “green energy” agenda.

Here is how the sections breakdown in words spoken on each:

• 345 words blaming Bush
• 418 words on the impact to Gulf region
• 778 words on the oilspill and cleanup efforts
• 863 words on Obama’s “green energy” agenda

Clearly, the president’s number one priority in making this speech was to make the case for his high tax, command and control, lifestyle changing, carbon regulating energy plan.

Moreover, Obama placed his 863 words on “green energy” at the end of his address. In so doing, the president orgnized the speech on the principles of inductive logic – in which the bad news comes first in order to soften the impact of the proposed solution. Everything which comes before his pitch for “green energy” is properly seen, then, as support for Obama’s proposal. The crisis, the impact, the lives of those affected, all props in Obama’s drive to remake the nation’s energy policy.

Last night, Obama revealed himself to be nothing more than a snake-oil salesman. He knows that the public does not want his energy-limiting scheme, but he is determined to force it on America using the worst environmental tragedy in the nation’s history as the hook. Never let a crisis go to waste.

Former White House Counsel John Dean spoke those words to President Richard Nixon almost 40 years ago as the Nixon White House was desperately trying to cover its role in the Watergate scandal—ultimately unsuccessfully. The cancer did bust, the administration was laid low, and succeeding generations of Americans learned that the cover up is often worse than the crime.

Now, the Obama administration finds itself in the middle of its first genuine Washington scandal. And the White House’s ham-fisted effort to sweep the budding scandal under the rug—failing to heed the lesson of Watergate—is largely to blame.

White House Counsel Robert Bauer’s memo detailing the White House’s version of events in the case of Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee Joe Sestak raises far more questions than it answers. Released last Friday, at the beginning of both a three-day holiday weekend and a weeklong Congressional recess, the memo was intended to be the Obama administration’s last word on the matter. But the memo’s self-serving explanation and lack of detail have turned a minor annoyance for the administration into a full fledged Washington scandal, virtually guaranteeing that there will be much more written and said about Sestak, the administration’s interference in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, and what looks to be a politically motivated cover up.

In February, Rep. Joe Sestak was asked a seemingly innocuous question by local Philadelphia television host Larry Kane: “Were you ever offered a job to get out of this race?” Sestak’s answer, and the unflinching manner in which he delivered it, are now infamous. “Yes,” he said, swift and surely. Kane pressed. “So you were offered a job by someone in the White House?” “Yes,” the answer came again. What Sestak was describing is a felony—18 USC 600 makes it a crime for anyone to offer a federal job, position, or appointment in exchange for a political act.

Bauer’s memo admits that a conversation took place between Sestak and former president Bill Clinton at the behest of the administration; and admits that Clinton and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had discussed the possibility of finding a place for Sestak on a presidential advisory board in return for his agreement not to challenge Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary. But the memo excuses the offer as legal because the advisory role the administration envisioned for the congressman would have been uncompensated. The law makes no such distinction, and the memo’s reliance on this erroneous interpretation only heightens the contradictions between what Sestak has been saying for months, and what the Obama administration has refused to discuss until now.

Since the original interview, Sestak has been asked on numerous occasions about his claim that the White House essentially tried to buy him out of the primary. He has never challenged the characterization that he was offered a job to bow out. Beyond that, Sestak has refused to reveal any details about what he was offered or with whom he spoke. Sestak never endeavored to correct the record and explain that he was offered a relatively low-ranking spot on a voluntary advisory board. He was apparently comfortable with the perception that the administration was so afraid of either losing him as a congressman, or losing Specter as the nominee, that it would offer Sestak a high-level administration position. On Friday, Sestak dutifully recounted the conversation described in the White House memo, saying that he spoke with President Clinton just once last July about keeping out of the primary, and only for 30-60 seconds.

The Watergate scandal was famously framed by a question from Republican Senator Howard Baker: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” The White House memo in Offer-gate makes that question more relevant today, not less. Did President Obama know of Emanuel’s outreach to Clinton? Did he approve it? Did Obama authorize a role for Sestak in the administration if he agreed to stay out of the primary? So far the White House isn’t saying. And what of the reports that Colorado Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff was similarly offered an administration post in return for declining to challenge incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet in the primary? The White House is attempting to spin its way out of the Romanoff allegations now.

Despite the White House effort to close the book on the Sestak affair, the Obama administration has given the next Woodward and Bernstein plenty of answers to chase. Perhaps somewhere in the administration, there is a Deep Throat with a story to tell. Like Watergate, Offer-gate will likely compound itself now growing bigger with each passing day that the administration refuses to provide answers to the questions its explanation has raised. And for the administration, there can be no assurance that it will not bust.

Originally published at The Daily Caller.

State Senate President Steve Sweeney, who is also a private sector union boss, let his thuggish ways show just a bit after Christie rejected the bills. Sweeney taunted the governor from the back of the room. “We’ll be back, Governor.”

Christie dismissed him, “Okay. We’ll see,” he said.

This little bit of political theater comes in the midst of a raging budget battle in the Garden State. Christie, acting on a campaign pledge, has refused to accept any tax increases to close a nearly $11 billion budget deficit. In case that number is not shocking enough, consider that the entire budget of the state is just under $30 billion.

The so-called “millionaire’s tax” is actually a surcharge on individuals earning over $400,000 a year. The tax expired on December 31, 2009, two months after Christie defeated former governor Jon Corzine. Corzine and his fellow Democrats did not make the expiring tax an issue in the fall campaign. Nor did they attempt to extend the tax in either the lame-duck session of the legislature or in the first two weeks of the new session, during which time Corzine remained governor and would certainly have signed it.

Democrats are reintroducing the tax now simply to try and make Christie look like a heartless protector of the “rich” at the expense of the middle class and the poor. They know it. Christie knows it.

But Christie doesn’t care.

Here’s what the governor had to say about the Democrats’ tax increase:

“While I have little doubt that the sponsors and supporters of this bill sincerely believe that the state can tax its way out of this financial crisis, I believe that this bill does nothing more than repeat the failed, irresponsible and unsustainable fiscal policies of the past,” wrote Christie in his veto statement. “Now is not the time for more of the same. Ultimately, another tax increase will punish the state’s struggling small businesses and set our economy further back from recovery.”

Christie knows that the people of New Jersey are on his side. Just last month, voters in record numbers heeded his call to vote down their local school budgets, rejecting a record 60% of school district spending plans statewide. They did this despite an ugly and desperate campaign by the NJEA – the state teacher’s union – and the predictable caturwalling of Democrats. Anyone remotely familiar with New Jersey politics knows just what a momentous occurance this was. New Jersey teacher’s unions have never been publicly rebuked like this.

Now the public sector unions have stepped up for their turn, and Democrats in the state legislature are right there to carry their water. Sweeney will make good on his promise. Democrats will be back with their tax increase. But in the end, Governor Christie will get his budget largely intact.

The rules of the game have changed in Trenton. The old ways of doing business are no longer operative. It may take a few more public shamings, but Democrats will soon come to realize that in New Jersey there is only one rule to follow: Don’t mess with Christie.

At the start of Wednesday’s White House visit, Calderon said the law discriminated against Mexicans and called for the two countries to work together to develop an immigration policy that did not force people to live in the shadows “with such laws as the Arizona law, which is forcing our people to face discrimination.” [emphasis added]

Obama did not defend Arizona, as one might expect a President of the United States to do, especially at the White House. No, that’s not what change looks like. Obama instead joined in with a foreign head of state in bashing US citizens on US soil.

Obama claimed to understand the frustrations of the people of Arizona in passing the law, which exactly mirrors the requirements in a seventy year old federal statute. But he again characterized the law as “misdirected,” and outright lied about the law’s intention.

“We’re examining any implications especially for civil rights because in the United States of America, no law abiding person — be they an American citizen, illegal immigrant, or a visitor or tourist from Mexico — should ever be subject to suspicion simply because of what they look like.”

It is well known by now that the Arizona law authorizes no such thing. In fact, racial profiling is specifically outlawed in the law as a means of enforcement. But Obama nevertheless took the opportunity to make cause with a foreign government at the expense of America.

And with that, the apology tour comes home. No need for Obama to grovel in far flung world capitals any longer. Now, foreign heads of state can come to the White House and trash America and her citizens with impunity.

Pretty soon President Obama is going to have to make a decision. Either he is President of these United States, warts – as he sees them – and all, or he is some kind of post-national leader: a kind of president-in-exile within his own country.

A man cannot serve two masters. He will love the one and despise the other. The question for Obama is whose servant is he?

WASHINGTON — Sen. Robert Menendez is urging the Major League Baseball Players’ Association to boycott next year’s All-Star Game in Phoenix over the recently passed Arizona law to crack down on illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Democrat says in a letter that 27 percent of Major League players are Latinos and they shouldn’t be subjected to a law Menendez says codifies racial profiling.

Leaving aside the fact that he is ignorant of what the law does and does not codify – racial profiling is specifically outlawed – as the head of the DSCC, Menendez presumably speaks for Democratic Senate candidates, including Arizona’s Rodney Glassman.  Does Tuscon City Council member Glassman support Menendez’s aim to deny Arizona millions in tourism and advertising dollars, not to mention the free exposure that hosting the mid-summer classic would bring in these tough economic times?  Or does he side with the 64% of Arizona likely voters who favor the law?

Moreover, illegal immigration is a problem nationwide, not just in Arizona.  Democrats running in other states must have a position on the law.  Do Democratic Senate candidates endorse Menedez’s call to essentially ignore illegal immigration in their states, leaving it up to a federal government that has shirked its responsibility to secure the border?  Or do Democrat candidates side with the 60% of likely voters nationally who support local enforcement of immigration status?  Maybe they should be asked.

Sen. Menendez has just made campaigning a little more difficult for Democrats.

But there are some on the right as well who are critical of Arizona’s actions, if not its intent. Among those critics is Matt Lewis, who penned an op-ed that appeared in The Daily Caller yesterday. In his piece, “Avoiding hypocrisy on immigration,” Matt argues that conservatives should be skeptical of the new law on the grounds that it gives too much power to government. Matt is concerned about discrimination against people of color, too. But primarily he thinks that conservatives are principle-bound to oppose the law.

“I can’t help but find the willingness of many conservatives to grant the police unprecedented power to question U.S. citizens in Arizona as somewhat ironic. Conservative activist Grover Norquist has dubbed the conservative movement the “leave us alone coalition,” and as Justice Brandeis might have said, this law infringes Arizonans’ “right to be left alone”—free from government intrusion. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer should have vetoed it.”

First, let’s establish what Arizona’s law does and does not do. It does not empower police to stop random people on the street and demand their papers, Gestapo-style, as many on the left have claimed. The law quite simply requires police to check immigration status with reasonable suspicion only after they have made “lawful contact.” In other words, the police have to have good reason to stop someone for some other reason before even getting to the immigration check. This power is not unprecedented. In fact, police in all 50 states already check immigration status in this way every time they ask for a driver’s license, since in most states, illegals cannot obtain one. Furthermore, the law specifically prohibits racial profiling as a tool. So the worries about discrimination seem themselves to be an emotional overreaction.

The charge of hypocrisy leveled here from the right echoes an argument that liberals and Democrats have used, to great effect, against Republican and tea party activists on the issue of government spending and deficits. Namely, that conservative criticism of the Obama administration’s profligate spending habits should be dismissed because Republicans ran up deficits when they were in charge. Proponents of this rationale often cite the Bush Administration’s “unfunded wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other things, to make their case.

What these arguments have in common, and where they go wrong, is that they treat all government actions as inherently the same, without regard to whether or not they spring from a proper role for government as defined by the Constitution. Therefore, spending on a war in Iraq is equal to spending on welfare programs. And government “intrusion” to check immigration status is the same as government restrictions on gun ownership. But this equivalence of government actions is a false one. All government spending is not the same, and neither are all enforcement actions.

Conservatives argue that the government should spend whatever money is necessary to protect the nation from attack, whatever the deficit implications. Defense is a basic responsibility of the federal government, and few but the most ardent liberals would argue that the US should not pay any price in its own defense. Conservative acceptance of deficit spending in this context does not preclude them from arguing that the government should not spend exorbitant sums to provide universal health care, for instance. Despite the Obama Administration’s insistence, health care is not constitutionally mandated. Therefore, conservative criticism of its deficit implications is justified.

Similarly, on immigration, conservatives may rightly argue that Arizona can have its police check the immigration status of people stopped for lawful reasons, while at the same time arguing that the government has no right to intrude somewhere else, as in private health care decisions. One is justified, while the other is not. There is no hypocrisy in expecting the government to enforce its immigration laws and to “leave us alone” when it comes to buying health insurance.

But critics of the Arizona law, left and right, have a bigger problem to contend with. Federal law already requires all resident aliens—i.e. green card holders—to carry their identification papers on them at all times. Arizona, then, has done no more with this law than the federal government itself.

Matt is right to say that immigration is a touchy subject that is fraught with emotion on all sides. Indeed, many of the nation’s political issues are. But in the case of Arizona’s new law, all of the emotional arguments appear to be coming from those who oppose the state’s actions. Conservative supporters of the law need not be reminded to make their arguments on principle. They already are.

Originally published at The Daily Caller.

Good for the House GOP. This is exactly what Democrats would have done had the roles been reversed. And I think it’s safe to say now that this action officially makes the Massa allegations a scandal and a campaign issue. As they should be.

UPDATE 2: The GOP resolution passed the House on a vote of 402-2. No Democrats voted against the resolution, which means shenanigans are afoot. It is now up to the House GOP to keep Democrats honest on this.

The Eric Massa sideshow just became a full-fledged election year scandal aimed like a dagger directly at the Democrats’ House majority. Numerous press outlets are now reporting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office was informed in October of last year about the former New York representative’s odd behavior with male subordinates.

Joe Racalto, Massa’s chief of staff, was uneasy that Massa, 50, was living with several young, unmarried male staffers and using sexually explicit language with them, one source said. But what finally prompted him to call Pelosi’s director of member services, the source said, was a lunch date that Massa made with a congressional aide in his 20s who worked in the office of Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).

According to a person briefed on the call, Racalto was concerned that the lunch followed a pattern by Massa — who is married and has two children — of trying to spend time alone with young gay men with no ostensible work purpose. Racalto, according to this person, also alerted Frank’s chief of staff. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the matter.

Last week, Pelosi said the she first heard of concerns about Massa’s behavior in early March. Pelosi said her staff did not inform her of every rumor about members of Congress. But that explanation is no longer operative, since this was not a rumor that her staff picked up. It was a plea for intervention by none other than the member’s chief of staff, his highest ranking aide.

Pelosi’s “hear no evil” act is now about as believable as her pledge to run the “most ethical Congress in history.” She knew, and chose to do nothing.

Once upon a time, Pelosi was harshly critical of a House leadership which she said should have known about former congressman Mark Foley’s interactions with young male House pages.

“The children who work as Pages in the Congress are Members’ special trust. Statements by the Republican Leadership indicate that they violated this trust when they were made aware of the internet stalking of an underage Page by Mr. Foley and covered it up for six months to a year.

Many junior staffers in congressional offices are young people, fresh out of college. Although they are not children, they are deserving of protection from sex starved congressmen who seek to use their high position to score a bit more than campaign contributions.

Yet Pelosi did nothing. For six months she and her office looked the other way as Massa shared a house with five staffers and abused his official position to try and bed young male staffers on his and other members’ staffs. Pelosi’s failure to do anything to stop Massa’s behavior once his Chief of Staff made her office aware of it is unethical and shameful and casts a pall over the entire House.

Republicans are reportedly weighing a call for an investigation into Pelosi’s and Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s actions in handling the Massa allegations. And well they should. There will be charges of “politicization” and cries of “partisanship,” as Hoyer pre-emptively charged on the Sunday shows. But these criticisms should be seen for what they are: baseless attempts to distract from the issue at hand. Namely, the Democrats’ callous disregard for serious and credible allegations of behavior that meets the legal definition of sexual harrassment occurring in the people’s House.

Of particular interest given the news of the week is the role Allen reports for White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina.

President Barack Obama’s top advisers are quietly laying the groundwork for the 2012 reelection campaign, which is likely to be run out of Chicago and managed by White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, according to Democrats familiar with the discussions.  [...]

Advisers said Messina is valued for his relationships on Capitol Hill…

“Jim can bring the bare knuckles, and he can make sure members are advocating for the president,” a colleague said.

Bare knuckles, and felonious offers of plum Administration jobs, too.  Messina is the White House official who allegedly offered Democrat Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff a job in the Department of the Interior to drop his primary challenge of Sen. Michael Bennett in Colorado.  Offering a federal job in exchange for a political favor is a violation of federal law.

Romanoff refused, as did Rep. Joe Sestak, who just last week let slip that he too was offered a high-ranking Administration job – speculation is it was Secretary of the Navy – to bow out of his primary challenge of Sen. Arlen Specter.

So far, the major media has largely ignored the Obama Administration’s effort to buy off its favored candidates’ political opponents.  But the realization is growing that this is a major story going unreported.  Jake Tapper and Major Garrett asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs for comment on the allegations at yesterday’s press briefing.  Gibbs ducked the questions, pleading ignorance – not exactly a stretch on any subject.  But he didn’t deny the allegations specifically.

“I was traveling for a couple of days, as you know.  I have seen some stuff on that, but I have not looked into this.”

Sestak is not saying who at the White House made the illicit job offer to him, but given his position as Rahm Emanuel’s deputy, and his valuable contacts in Congress, Messina is a likely suspect.  Now the Administration is making plans to have this alleged federal lawbreaker run the president’s reelection campaign.

Perhaps now Republicans will start asking very public, very pointed questions about the offers to Sestak and Romanoff, Messina’s role, and the potential involvement of White House officials right up to and including President Obama himself.  This scandal in waiting has the makings of an electoral game changer bigger than the Jack Abramoff affair and the Mark Foley fiasco, which Democrats wasted no time in using against just about every candidate with a R after his name in 2006.

Republicans should call for a Special Prosecutor to investigate Sestak’s and Romanoff’s claims.  They should be asking what Obama knew and when he knew it, and demand e-mails, phone logs, and visitor records of top Administration officials.  And they should be seeking subpoenas for Messina, Romanoff, Emanuel, and Axelrod in the relevant House and Senate committees.  When Democrats and the Administration refuse these calls for investigation, Republicans should use that against them in the campaign.  That’s what the Democrats would do given similar allegations against a Republican administration, and turnabout is fair play.

At the very least they should be raising questions about why low-level staffers in the Administration are empowered to hand out federal jobs as favors for doing the president’s bidding.  Who is minding the store?

Politico says that the administration has not yet centered on a theme for Obama’s reelection.  But the Messina scandal makes one thing clear:  they won’t be able to run on bringing a new kind of politics to Washington.  Not with an alleged federal lawbreaker running the campaign.

Last week, Democratic Senate Candidate Joe Sestak, a retired Admiral, let slip in an interview that someone in the White House offered him a position in the Administration if he would drop his primary challenge of Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania.  Sestak wouldn’t elaborate on which job he was offered – speculation centers on Secretary of the Navy – but it hardly matters.  As Jeffrey Lord points out, federal law prohibits anyone from offering, soliciting, or receiving any federal office in exchange for a political favor.

“Whoever solicits or receives … any….thing of value, in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.” – 18 USC Sec. 211

It seems highly unlikely that this was a misunderstanding or exaggeration on Sestak’s part.  It’s the second time in this election season that another Democrat has accused the White House of trying to buy them out of a Senate challenge with an offer of employment.

Last year, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s deputy, Jim Messina, reportedly suggested that Colorado Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff might find himself a position in the Department of the Interior if he dropped his prospective primary challenge of Sen. Michael Bennett. Romanoff, like Sestak, refused to be bought off.

And remember that Vice President Joe Biden’s wife committed a gaffe before the inauguration when she bragged on Oprah that her husband was offered a choice of Secretary of State or Vice President by Obama. Combine all of this with the now legendary incompetence displayed by Obama’s vetting team and it’s clear that there is a pattern of playing fast and loose with appointments in the Administration.

The Sestak and Bennett incidents are potentially far worse than that. Republicans need to start asking very pointed, very public questions, right now. They should call for a Special Counsel to lead a Department of Justice investigation along the lines of Patrick Fitzgerald’s look at the Valerie Plame affair.  Even if no wrongdoing is uncovered, the atmospherics of this scandal in waiting are bad for the Obama White House. The president would have to explain why relativley low-level staffers in his Administration feel empowered to offer high-ranking positions as plums for doing the Administration’s bidding without consulting their superiors. Who is minding the store?

Of course, the indications are that this scandal is much worse than that, potentially implicating Emanuel, Axelrod, two Cabinet level officials, Biden, even Obama himself. Thus far, the mainstream press has yawned a collective whoop-dee-doo at the revelations. Republicans should force their hand, accept the gift Obama’s ham-handedness may have provide for them, and get the 2010 campaign season started with a good old fashioned Washington scandal.

Video can be found here.  Text will be posted after the jump.

It is difficult to describe the extent to which New Jersey is a Democratic machine state.  This was a speech delivered to a hostile Democratic-controlled legislature smarting from Christie’s decisive victory in November.  Yet the new governor minced no words, and offered no quarter.  He went directly at the Democrats and their entrenched and entitled interests that have for years used state coffers as their own personal slush fund, nearly bankrupting New Jersey in the process.  And he challenged them to join him in changing the way Trenton does business, or be exposed to the harsh light of the truth.

This speech should be required viewing for every Republican seeking office in 2010, both candidates for governorships and legislative seats at the federal and state level alike.  The actions Governor Christie describes taking to balance the state budget are conservative leadership on display – the kind of leadership the Republican Party, and the nation at large, has been searching for in vain since November of 2008.  There will be much more to hear from Governor Christie in the weeks and months ahead, and not just on the budget.  With this speech, he has thrust himself onto the national scene in a way that even his upset victory could not.  Republicans have a new rising star in the Governor of New Jersey.

Remarks of Governor Chris Christie to
the Special Session
of the New Jersey Legislature
Regarding the Budget for Fiscal Year 2010
February 11 2010

Mr. President, Madame Speaker, members of the Senate and Assembly, fellow citizens of New Jersey. Twenty three days ago, I was honored to take the oath of office as your governor and promised you and the people of New Jersey a new direction.

The old ways of doing business have not served the people well, I said, and I asked for your help in bringing about change.

Today, I have called you together because it is time to take the first major – and urgent — step in delivering the change we promised, in the critically important area of the state budget.

New Jersey is in a state of financial crisis. Our state’s budget has been left in a shambles and requires immediate action to achieve balance. For the current fiscal year 2010, which has only four and one-half months left to go, the budget we have inherited has a two billion dollar gap.

The budget passed less than eight months ago, in June of last year, contained all of the same worn out tricks of the trade that have become common place in Trenton, that have driven our citizens to anger and frustration and our wonderful state to the edge of bankruptcy.

What do I mean exactly? This year’s budget projected 5.1 % growth in sales tax revenue and flat growth in corporate business tax revenues. In June of 2009, was there anyone in New Jersey, other than in the department of treasury, who actually believed any revenues would grow in 2009-2010? With spiraling unemployment heading over 10%, with a financial system in crisis and with consumers petrified to spend, only Trenton treasury officials could certify that kind of growth. In fact, sales tax revenue is not up 5%, it is down 5.5 %; and corporate business tax revenue is not flat, it is down 8%. Any wonder why we are in such big trouble? Any question why the people don’t trust their government anymore and demanded change in November? Today, we must make a pact with each other to end this reckless conduct with the people’s government. Today, we come to terms with the fact that we cannot spend money on everything we want. Today, the days of Alice in Wonderland budgeting in Trenton end.

The facts are that revenues are coming in $1.2 billion below what was projected last year, and over $800 million in additional spending was done by the previous administration on their way out the door.

Our Constitution requires a balanced budget. Our commitment requires us to begin the next fiscal year with a prudent opening balance. Our conscience and common sense require us to fix the problem in a way that does not raise taxes on the most overtaxed citizens in America. Our love for our children requires that we do not shove today’s problems under the rug only to be discovered again tomorrow. Our sense of decency must require that we stop using tricks that will make next year’s budget problem even worse.

So today, I am beginning the process of fiscal reform and discipline. Today, we are going to act swiftly to fix problems long ignored. Today, I begin to do what I promised the people of New Jersey I would do. Today, I begin to give them the change they voted for in November.

I take no joy in having to make these decisions. I know these judgments will affect fellow New Jerseyans and will hurt. This is not a happy moment. However, what choices do we have left? The defenders of the status quo will start chattering as soon as I leave this chamber. They’ll say the problems are not that bad; listen to me, I can spare you the pain and sacrifice. We know this is simply not true. New Jersey has been steaming toward financial disaster for years due to that kind of attitude. The people elected us to end the talk and to act decisively. Today is the day for the complaining to end and for statesmanship to begin.

Today, I am taking action to cut state spending to balance the budget this year.

This is the immediate action I am taking:

This morning, I signed an executive order freezing the necessary state spending to balance our budget.

We will freeze the spending of unspent technical balances across a wide array of state programs. This includes everything from unspent funds to upgrade energy systems in state facilities to those aimed at assisting local governments in their consolidation plans.

Not everything is painless. Some projects will be delayed or terminated, some services will be reduced. But in total, we can reduce spending by over $550 million this year by lapsing these unspent balances – by not spending these funds and applying them now towards our multi-billion dollar budget gap.

For example, our state’s special municipal aid program includes a balance of $3.2 million, mostly for overhead costs. This spending is not appropriate, not necessary and will not be done.

The “InvestNJ” program has a large unspent balance and a failed record in actually creating new jobs. We can save taxpayers $50 million by terminating this program now. Instead, I believe we should create, without significant public expense, a one stop shop to clear away obstacles and speed the path to job creation – the New Jersey partnership for action.

I will also take action to terminate or suspend programs to save another $70 million this year.

Some projects we can afford to delay until the state has the resources to pay for them. This list would include capital improvements to state buildings, correctional facilities, and state parks.

It includes items like the main street program which has both current and long term funds which have not been spent yet and will not realistically be spent this year. These funds should be returned to the general fund to help balance the budget.

In total, deferral of these long term projects and items to a less rainy day in New Jersey can reduce spending by $90 million in this fiscal year.

We can improve certain practices in the ways we use and collect revenues.

Two examples: we can accelerate our dispute resolution processes on taxation settlements and save $20 million.

And we can appropriately ask the urban enterprise zones to repay the general fund for its subsidy of the required contribution of these zones to property tax relief in years past.

By far the biggest category of spending we will need to cut, however, is that for programs which actually have merit, and in most cases make sense, but which we simply cannot afford at this time. Like any family, and like forty two other states with constitutionally required balanced budgets, we must live within our means. New Jersey does not have a revenue problem—we already have higher taxes than any other state in the union. We have gone down the road of ever higher taxes to pay for Trenton’s addiction to spending. What has it given us? 10.1 percent unemployment, a dormant economy and a failure of hope for growth in our future. Higher taxes is the road to ruin. We must, and we will, shrink our government.

That means making some tough choices. It means tightening our belts. It means making do with the resources we have. And it means charting the course to reform now so that our spending will be more effective in the future.

So today I am implementing over a billion dollars in reductions and reforms to programs that we simply cannot afford in the current economic environment and in our current fiscal state.

For example, the state cannot continue to subsidize New Jersey transit to the extent it does. So I am cutting that subsidy. New Jersey transit will have to improve the efficiency of its operations, revisit its rich union contracts, end the patronage hiring that has typified its past, and may also have to consider service reductions or fare increases. But the system needs to be made more efficient and effective.

The state cannot this year spend another $100 million contributing to a pension system that is desperately in need of reform. I am encouraged by the bi-partisan bills filed in the Senate this week to begin pension and benefit reform. I commend President Sweeney and Senator Kean for leading the way to begin this long overdue set of reforms. I am sure our Assembly colleagues will follow suit with the same kind of bi-partisan effort.

These bills must just mark the beginning, not the end, of our conversation and actions on pension and benefit reform. Because make no mistake about it, pensions and benefits are the major driver of our spending increases at all levels of government—state, county, municipal and school board. Also, don’t believe our citizens don’t know it and demand, finally, from their government real action and meaningful reform. The special interests have already begun to scream their favorite word, which, coincidentally, is my nine year old son’s favorite word when we are making him do something he knows is right but does not want to do—“unfair.”

Let’s tell our citizens the truth—today—right now—about what failing to do strong reforms costs them.

One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits — a total of $3.8m on a $120,000 investment. Is that fair?

A retired teacher paid $62,000 towards her pension and nothing, yes nothing, for full family medical, dental and vision coverage over her entire career. What will we pay her? $1.4 million in pension benefits and another $215,000 in health care benefit premiums over her lifetime. Is it “fair” for all of us and our children to have to pay for this excess?

The total unfunded pension and medical benefit costs are $90 billion. We would have to pay $7 billion per year to make them current. We don’t have that money—you know it and I know it. What has been done to our citizens by offering a pension system we cannot afford and health benefits that are 41% more expensive than the average fortune 500 company’s costs is the truly unfair part of this equation.

The only principled path in light of these mountainous challenges is this—take these reform bills, make them even stronger and put them on my desk before I return here on March sixteenth for my budget address. And on this you have my pledge—unlike in the past, when you stood up and did what was right, this governor will not pull the rug out from underneath you—I will sign strong reform bills.

But until that reform is enacted, we cannot in good conscience fund a system that is out of control, bankrupting our state and its people, and making promises it cannot meet in the long term.

The biggest category of reductions will likely be the most controversial.

School aid is a large proportion of New Jersey’s budget – especially of the amount which has not yet been spent in FY 2010. So we cannot put our budget in balance without putting some school aid in reserve.

We are not alone in this; other states have been required to do the same.

The previous administration severely underestimated our budget gap, and it proposed to reserve some $230 million in school aid – yet it did not offer a legislative solution to achieve this number, and once again, left important business unfinished.

I am implementing a solution which insures that every school district has the resources to provide a thorough and efficient education to its students.

Our solution does not take one penny from an approved school instructional budget. Not one dime out of the classroom. Not one text book left unbought. Not one teacher laid off. Not one child’s education compromised for one minute. Not one dollar of new property taxes will be needed. The union protectors of the status quo will claim otherwise—once again, they will be proven to be self-interested and wrong.

Many school districts in New Jersey have surpluses that were not a part of their fiscal year 2010 budgets. This is because they were either not anticipated – so called excess surpluses – or were placed in a reserve account – so called reserve surpluses.

I am reducing school aid in a way that ensures that no district will have aid withheld in an amount that is greater than its surpluses.

To some, an across the board reduction of a fixed percentage of school aid may seem more fair. But because some districts rely so heavily on state aid, this may affect their ability to provide the required thorough and efficient education to their students. And this approach would likely throw some districts into a deficit situation. We have not reduced school aid with an axe—we have done it with a scalpel and with great care.

The total amount of aid to be withheld is $475 million. I know this solution will not be popular. More than 500 school districts will be affected, and more than 100 districts will lose all state aid for the remainder of the year.

But action is required. It is late in the fiscal year. The irresponsible budgeting of the past, coupled with failed tax policies which lie like a heavy, wet blanket suffocating tax revenues and job growth, have required these extraordinary steps. Despite this bold action, remember, we have not taken one dime from classroom instruction, not forced one penny of increase in our property taxes.

Let me repeat. Every dollar in every school budget approved in every school district across the state remains intact.

Suburban districts will sacrifice. Urban districts will sacrifice. Rural districts will sacrifice. Some, both inside and outside this chamber, will urge you to retreat to the corner and protect your own piece of turf. Our state is in crisis. Our people are hurting. Now is the time when we all must resist the traditional, selfish call to protect your own turf at the cost of our state. It is time to leave the corner, join the sacrifice, come to the center of the room and be part of the solution. I urge all of us to come to the center of the room voluntarily, to stand up to the special interests, to fix our broken state – together. For those who continue to defend the old ways of selfishly protecting turf, who stay in the corner defending parochial interests, please be on notice – people of good will who want a better, stronger New Jersey will band together to come into those corners and drag you to the center of the room to make our state the place we know it can be.

In total, I am cutting spending in 375 different state programs, from every corner of state government.

I doubt that many will be popular. I will use my executive authority to implement them now, because I must.

Taken as a package, they will achieve the required savings and eliminate our $2 billion budget gap.

I am not happy, but I am not afraid to make these decisions, either. It is what the people sent me here to do.

I ask of you in the legislature to show the same frankness and commitment. For inaction is not an option. That was the path taken for far too long.

The cuts I have outlined may sound dramatic. And they are. Some sound painful. And they will be.

But let me give you some context. As of the first of this month, about half of the budget was already spent. The state at January 31 had about $14 billion of unspent monies for the current fiscal year. Of that amount, $8 billion cannot be touched – by contract, as in the case of state employees or maintenance of effort for federal stimulus money; by constitutional requirement; by the terms of our bonds; or by law.

So upon arrival, my administration had $6 billion of balances to work with — $6 billion of balances from which to find $2 billion of savings. We had to cut 1/3 of our available funds with only 4 ½ months to go in the fiscal year.

We all were taught when we were young that it is not always easy to do the right thing.

We chose not to use gimmicks or band aids to hide the budget gap or defer it until next year, when it would be even worse. We refused to repeat the failures of the past.

We chose to confront the problem head on by reforming our spending habits, and laying the groundwork for reform so that we can repair a structural deficit that will be even larger – many times larger – in the next fiscal year, 2011.

So the cuts I am making today are not easy — but they are necessary.

And make no mistake: our priorities are to reduce and reform New Jersey’s habit of excessive government spending, to reduce taxes, to encourage job creation, to shrink our bloated government, and to fund our responsibilities on a pay-as-you-go basis and not leave them for future generations. In short, to make new jersey a home for growth instead of a fiscal basket case.

We have set out in a new direction – a direction dictated by the votes of the people of New Jersey – and I do not intend to turn back. I will not break faith with them or the mandate they have given me.

A great president, Ronald Reagan, once said that: “a leader, once convinced a particular course of action is the right one, must have the determination to stick with it and be undaunted when the going gets tough.”

In just over a month, I will come before you to lay out my plan for fiscal year 2011 and beyond. The challenge next year will be even greater. The cuts likely will be even deeper. The reforms will, of necessity, be even more dramatic.

But let us not make that problem even worse.

Let us begin the process of reform today.

Let us listen to the will of the people and proceed in a new, more responsible direction.

Let us live within the means the people are already providing us and not take more of their hard-earned wages and savings from their pockets.

Let us have the courage to make change; the fortitude to see it through; and the vision not only to craft a more sound and sustainable budget, but to build a better state that can grow once again.

Thank you very much. God bless America and may God continue to bless the great state of New Jersey.