NYT: Corzine Explains Budget Cuts to Angry Students at Rutgers

[DeepModem Mom]

Corzine Explains Budget Cuts to Angry Students at Rutgers
By DAVID W. CHEN
Published: March 28, 2006

NEWARK, March 27 — Getting a taste of the public anger over his proposed budget, Gov. Jon S. Corzine was greeted on Monday by a phalanx of 100 Rutgers students here protesting his plan to cut spending on higher education by $169 million, or 8 percent.

But instead of ignoring the chants of "Corzine Pay!" and "Fight the Cut!" Governor Corzine did something that politicians are generally trained to avoid doing: He waded into the crowd, asked for a bullhorn from a student protester and explained his policies, before fielding a couple of questions.

In a calm voice, Mr. Corzine told the students that his budget proposal, which was unveiled last Tuesday, was only a first step, and that reducing the cuts to higher education would be his highest priority. But he cautioned that the state had many worthy and pressing needs, one of them being elementary and secondary school education. And he hinted that colleges might need to make sacrifices and redouble their efforts to root out any budgetary flab.

"I understand how this impacts individual lives, and why you might be angry, but think about it in the holistic context of what we're trying to do for kids," he told the students after a swearing-in ceremony for Public Advocate Ronald K. Chen at Rutgers School of Law. "We have to do more than just look at one area of the budget when you want to challenge me."

The exchange marked the most dramatic — and most unscripted — moment yet in Mr. Corzine's fledgling efforts to explain and build support for his $30.9 billion budget for the 2007 fiscal year, which starts on July 1. Getting the most attention have been Mr. Corzine's proposals to raise the sales tax to 7 percent from 6 percent, and increases in other taxes, in hopes of plugging a projected shortfall of $4.3 billion. And for the past week, Mr. Corzine has devoted much of his time to explaining his rationale to various newspaper editorial boards and bond-rating agencies, some of which have offered tentative words of encouragement....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/28/nyregion/28corzine.html

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. It's good to have an adult as Governor.

Whitman was abysmal, just a disaster for the state. Jimmy MackDaddy was just a greedy, incompetant fool, who was more interested in packing his staff with humpy, arrogant males than he was interested in getting serious about being governor.

Interesting fact about Jimmy MackDaddy: As titular leader of the NJ Dem Party, he earmarked the vastest amount of the party coffers for...himself. Something like $5mill was frozen for his own political use. That left the party with very little for the rest of the state.

[bmcatt]

3. Hear, hear...

And I'm glad I voted for him. I really doubt that Forrester would've had the sense or the spinal fortitude to make a bunch of tough decisions that didn't wind up putting us further into the hole for the future.

Now if only we could get more adults into government. Maybe we need to rethink the whole "minimum age" thing for public office and make it a "minimum maturity level" instead?

[Supersedeas]

13. a Republican without Mommie's scripted message is a lost Pubby

[NoodleBoy]

2. wow-- a politician with balls.

and not fake republican "i love guns" balls, but "I'll get inside a group of angry supporters without a 3-man-thick security detail and explain my unpopular policy" balls.

[Mister K]

4. I voted for him but I am concerned

It seems that when you have a fiscal responsible Dem as Governor who wants to fix things, he becomes unpopular very quickly. Florio was a good example for this. He tried to fix things and pissed everyone off. I will just have wait and see how much things are really going to change..and how much my property taxes and other things will increase.

[loveandlight]

5. I voted for him too...

And I think it is a good thing that he is taking his explanations right to the people, not trying to water it down or pretend that it isn't as bad as it sounds. I think Florio's problem was he was not personable. Corzine has a good manner when you meet him in person and if he can just keep calm and explain the need for cuts and a remanaged budget, hopefully he can gets things under control and start building towards a more positive kind of budget in the future.

I think this is a great opportunity for us as progressives to support a governor who is speaking the truth about our fiscal situation and not trying to patch it over with made-up fixes. And if he can manage to communicate the need and the reasons, maybe we can all work out the details together and come up with a better working budget than has been done in the past. It is unrealistic to continue to spend without the revenue to back it up. I think it is brave of him to try to make that point and stick with it. I hope it does work out in the end. I like Corzine and wish him success.

[mvd]

6. At least he's addressing the problem instead of..

borrowing more. But the sales tax increase sounds like a Repuke move. He gives pretty lame excuses as to why he can't raise taxes on the rich or corporations.

[brentspeak]

7. If Rutgers wants to make things easier for its students

it can stop doing things like signing its mens's basketball coach to an annual $500,000 salary, which it just did when it promoted Fred Hill to head coach. Just because other state universities pay a ridiculous amount of money for their coaches doesn't meant Rutgers has to be as stupid.

[eppur_se_muova]

11. In most states, it's the State legislature that blocks attempts to rein in

the sports programs. They know sports fans don't want to see "their" team lose, even if they have to flush education to do it.

[Javaman]

12. Personally, I think all college sports, with the exception of

inter-murals, be done away with. People go to college to learn, period.

Granted people will say, sport scholarships are some peoples only option to getting into college. Bullshit. With the money saved from doing away with the sports, it could provide many inner city students with the opportunity to attend college. New scholarship programs with this money that could be set up to help these students.

As long as we continue to emphasize sports as a way out, our nation will continue to loose it's intelligence base.

We now are trailing globally in the amount of engineers graduating from colleges.

We as a nation are not only going broke but becoming stupid on a grand scale.

[Zimmy44]

8. Forget the past...

Florio did the same, thinking he could get the pain over all at once...and was gone at the end of that term. Bad, bad move by Corzine, and comes across as arrogant. Measured progress would have been a lot better for all concerned.

[brentspeak]

9. Florio actually had a chance to win reelection despite the tax increase

He very narrowly lost to Christie Whitman, and could have won if he had only spent some real time campaigning in the cities. But he took them for granted, and voter turnout was poor, even in his own Camden.

[Rex]

10. Sorry peons, get use to the word 'sacrifice'.

America is a 'go fuck yourself' kinda place now. Don't go looking for support, education only is important when the State makes money off of it. Which it never does, so say good bye to college scholarships and hello to loans from banks (who just love the BFEE).

[cleofus1]

14. how unusual

a politician with the strength of his convictions...