SOTU = The Old Razzle Dazzle. “When you’re in trouble go into your dance.”

By Diane Gooch

“Give ’em the old razzle dazzle” goes the refrain to one of the most entertaining and memorable scenes from the play “Chicago.” It seems President Obama drew inspiration from the production named after the city in which he began his political career.

Unlike many who have derided his performance as “flat,” I found it to be reasonably dynamic. It was passionately delivered and vague enough to be inoffensive. The bipartisan applause lines and sprinkle of humor were injected to create the impression that the president was humble and not asking for anything illogical. Just the good old post-partisan and centrist Obama from the campaign days. As the song “Razzle Dazzle” continues, “when you’re in trouble go into your dance.”

At points, I felt as if the President had become a subscriber to our paper and was reading my editorials. A few “Did he really say that?” moments include his calls to: eliminate the 1099 penalty from the health care law, cut the corporate tax rate, reduce frivolous lawsuits, simplify the tax code, and scale back burdensome and archaic regulations on business. If this was his State of the Union two years ago, it may have been remotely believable.

It didn’t take long to realize that the speech was to serve mostly as a distraction from the reality of the president’s agenda for the past two years, and his designs to do more of the same in the next two: more spending, bigger government and completely ignore entitlement reform.

During a meeting with business executives I attended last year, the consensus in the room was that President Obama was smart to jam and ram through the most unpopular and controversial aspects of his agenda in his first two years in order to focus on getting re-elected over the next two. While most opposed the policies, they recognized the virtues of the tactics. The “ram it through” strategy was made even more appealing considering the overwhelming majorities the president’s political party held in Congress.

But that strategy has consequences when the agenda does not represent the “will of the governed,” and primary among the casualties is the president’s desire to be viewed as either a centrist or post-partisan. Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, his speech was undermined by the lack of his own credibility on the most critical issues he mentioned; job creation, deficit reduction and tax reform. That tension showed up in the speech itself. Even liberal columnist Paul Krugman commented in the New York Times on the speech: “We’re going to invest in the future — but we’re also going to freeze domestic spending. …I have no idea what the vision here was.”

Anticipating Republican charges that “investments” he promoted in his address were merely code for new federal spending we can’t afford, the president fashioned a pithy defense: “To borrow an analogy, cutting the deficit by cutting investments in areas like education, areas like innovation — that’s like trying to reduce the weight of an overloaded aircraft by removing its engine,” Mr. Obama said in a December speech at a community college in North Carolina. “It’s not a good idea.”

But in this defense lays the principle difference between Republicans and Democrats. The president and his Party believe the “engine” is the government and its bureaucracy, while Republicans believe the driving force comes from private enterprise and the American entrepreneur.

The unemployment problem facing our nation has made a sustainable and meaningful economic recovery very difficult. However, identifying the greatest impediment to resolving it is far clearer; it’s the uncertainty created by new government policies and burdensome regulations. In a two year period, private industry has endured the prospect of new health care mandates, attempts to regulate energy usage through a carbon tax, counter-intuitive financial regulations and the probability of the largest tax increase in American history in two short years.

Is it a wonder that corporate America is sitting on nearly $2 trillion in earnings, rather than investing in their own expansion? Without knowing what to expect over the next two years, the risk takers and job creators have had to assume a more defensive posture, relegating them unable to do what our economic system and workforce needs them to do, which is to grow and create jobs.

Rhetoric cannot replace a record of real achievement. After two years of “razzle dazzle,” the American people must demand more from this president.

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Christie On Pension Reform: “We can not afford to let another year go by”

Pension reform needs to happen by April or it won’t happen this year

During his Town Hall meeting in Middletown yesterday, Governor Chris Christine laid the blame for inaction on his pension reform package right in the laps of the Democratic legistlative leaders; Senate President Steve Sweeney, Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver and Senate Minority Leader Barbara Buono.  Christie read quotes from the statements each Democratic leader issued when he released his pension reform proposal last September.

The governor laid out the legislative calendar and asserted that is the reform agenda is not passed by the legislature by April, it won’t happen this year as the legislature will focus exclusively on the state budget in May and June and then leave on July 1st to launch the election campaign.  All seats in the legislature are up this year.

What Christie didn’t say is that if the legislature fails to deliver his reform agenda before they recess, that the campaign will be about the agenda.

Maybe that’s the campaign the Democrats want.  I hope so, because a campaign like that, a referendum on Chris Christie’s reform agenda , could very well lead to a Republican controlled legislature and more conservative reform measures, rather than these compromise measures.

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Too Much Snow Leads To Strange Behavior

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Don’t forget….

The Middlesex Republican Women’s Club meeting tonight featuring guest speaker Anna Little.

I’m going out to plow now, before Mr. Neighbor gets up.

Check back this afternoon for more video of Governor Christie’s Middletown Town Hall meeting.

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Peek-a-boo Francis…I see you!

By Russ Cote

So Francis favors transparency. Well that’s terrific. The first step down that long hallway toward redemption for Mr. Pallone you ask?

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Christie’s flattered that Obama imitated his State of the State theme in the State of the Union

The Governor is disappointed that the President did not address the “big things.”

By Art Gallagher

There was no classic “YouTube moment” confrontation at Governor Chris Christie’s Middletown Town Hall meeting today.  But if any of Christie’s statements today are to “go viral” or make national news, this is probably it.

Christie reminded the crowd of over 200 who came out in the snow that he broke from tradition in his State of the State address.  Rather than an address that “strokes the erogenous zones of every constituency,” the governor said quoting columnist George Will, Christie said his address was designed to deal with “big things;”  fiscal discipline, government employee pension and health care benefit reform, and education reform.

Christie said he noticed that President Barack Obama invoked a similar theme in his State of the Union address last night.   Christie said that he was flattered that the President was imitating him. 

Christie didn’t say it, but I will, maybe Vice President Biden wrote that part of Obama’s speech.

At about 2:20 in this clip, Christie says that he is disappointed that Obama did not address the federal “big things,” entitlements, in the State of the Union address.  Christie said that federal entitlements are analogous the pension and employee heath care reform on the state level, and the President “never mentioned boo about it last night”

In the remainder of the clip, Christie made his case for doing the “big things.”  He said he didn’t run for governor to be somebody, that he already was somebody. He said he came to do something.

Christie’s not running for President.  He is running for another term as governor.  He said he “guaranteed” that there will be somebody on the ballot opposite him in three years promising the easy way.  He said that his way will return New Jersey to prosperity and that the easy way would lead to economic ruin.

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Classic Christie: “I’m a lawyer and I’m trained to make up answers”

Governor Chris Christie was in great form this morning as he met with over 200 residents who came out in the snow for a Town Hall meeting in Middletown.

About 40 minutes into the meeting Christie turned to the residents for questions.  The first questioner, a councilman from a town with a large regional high school, asked the governor if there was a way that students who drive themselves to school could sign a waiver giving up their school busing privileges to that the district could save money on transportation costs.

Note the reactions of the three lawyers sitting directly behind the governor.

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GOP possible candidates, who should run and who should watch from home

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Freehold Volunteers Needed To Shovel For Seniors And Disabled

Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande’s“Snow Match” program is in need of able bodied volunteers to shovel sidewalks and driveways, especially in Freehold, where many seniors are calling into Casagrande’s office for help.

Casagrande has been matching volunteers and seniors/disabled since just after the first of the year.

Please call Casagrande’s office at 732-866-1695 or email [email protected] with your name, phone number and address if you are willing and able to shovel for a senior or disabled neighbor anywhere in the 12th legislative district, especially in Freehold.

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Why Do We Have A Pension System?

By Art Gallagher

Governor Chris Christie says that the rest of America is looking to New Jersey for the way forward in restoring fiscal sanity to state governments after decades of kicking the can down the road to the next generation.  Christie rightly says the day of reckoning has arrived and that he is the man to lead New Jersey back to prosperity to provide the rest of the country an example of how to do it.

On the question of government employee pensions and health care benefits, the governor has proposed a series of reforms that will reduce New Jersey’s unfunded liabilities from a current estimate of $183 billion to $23 billion in 30 years.  Christie’s reforms would require all government employees to contribute 8.5% of their salaries to their pensions, raise the retirement age from 62 to 65, roll back the 9% increase the Republican legislature gave away a decade ago, and reduce the anticipated return of the pension investments from 8.5% per year to 7.5%.  Government employees would have to pay 30% of their health care premiums, with the government picking up the other 70%.

That sounds like a good plan on paper.  It assumes the current and future administrations and legislatures will fund their portions of the pension and health care obligations, which given recent history is a risky assumption.  The 7.5% projected return could easily turn out to be too optimistic.  If the cost of heath care continues to escalate as it has over the last decade, deficits will continue to rise.

Still, Christie’s plan is a good answer to the question, “How do we save the pension and health care system from insolvency?”

As New Jersey, and many other states throughout the nation confront cumulative unfunded liabilities in the trillions of dollars, our leaders should confront a more fundamental question; “Why do we have defined pension benefits for government employees?”

Who besides government employees and union employees of once great corporations that have been bailed out by the federal government still get defined benefit pensions?

Are pensions necessary to attract qualified employees into government service?

Who is the pension system for?  If it is for the citizenry, i.e. we the people get a better government, for us and by us, because we guarantee our employees lifetime benefits, then perhaps it is appropriate to tax money out of the private economy to provide those benefits.

But can anyone really make that argument?  I would love to hear it.

Will government jobs really go unfilled if we don’t have a pension system?  Will we get less qualified employees?  Where will the more qualified employees go to work?  Where will they find employment that guarantees a level of income for their retirement?

Nowhere, I think.  If a reader can correct me on that, please do.

The pension problem should be addressed inside the context of this more fundamental question; Why do we have a defined benefit pension system? Should we have such a system?

If New Jersey’s, and many other states’, pension systems were private company pension systems the federal government would have shut them down years ago in favor of 401K type plans.

That is what state governments, lead by Chris Christie of New Jersey, should do now. Liquidate the system and shut it down.   Those who are already retired and within a short time of retirement should get the pensions they were promised.

The $40+ billion in the pension plan should be equitably distributed to its owners, the employees, and invested in retirement accounts of their own choosing.  With 800,000 people in the system, each future retiree would get a healthy initial investment into their plan.  Those with a longer terms of service would get more, with those who have paid less into the system getting less.

Going forward, just like the private sector, employees and employers should participate in pay as you go retirement plans.

The private sector addressed this problem 30 years ago.  It is not rocket science.  There is a model for solving the problem.  Christie and the other governors,  should follow that model.

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