By John Reitmeyer, The Record (Hackensack N.J.) –
HACKENSACK, N.J. — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took another tax-cutting budget victory lap on Tuesday, pitching his economic recovery message to an audience outside New Jersey.
The Republican governor offered many of his usual themes — that he convinced Democrats to cut spending and bring employee benefits under control and now he’s nearly coaxed them into cutting income taxes.
But his speech in New York was different in one key area: Its audience.
Christie delivered his message of economic recovery through tax cuts and spending restraint before former President George W. Bush at an economic forum organized by Bush’s Texas-based presidential center.
Christie barely mentioned Bush during the 2009 gubernatorial election. But during a speech that helped kick off the conference on pro-growth tax policies Tuesday, the governor praised the former president and said Bush’s conference agenda offers “the right policies for an America that’s optimistic.”
“Mr. President, thank you for setting that example, thank you for inspiring a whole new generation of conservative Republican leaders who you helped create,” he said to Bush, who was sitting right in from of him in the front row at the New-York Historical Society.
Christie spoke at the conference just after Bush, who introduced the governor as an “enormous personality,” and just before the conference got deeper into an agenda that included discussions with economists and a roundtable with several governors. Also included was another GOP tax-cut proponent, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Ryan’s Republican budget plan in the House features tax breaks and cuts to spending on entitlement programs.
Christie’s speech came just days after he returned from a high-profile trip to the Middle East and as his name continues to come up as a possible running mate for presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, whom the governor has endorsed.
It’s also one in a series of high-profile events for the governor who has built a national following in the GOP, including an appearance last month at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and last year at the Reagan Presidential Library, which came at the peak of Christie-for-president talk.
Tuesday’s event was organized by the George W. Bush Presidential Center to promote its 4 Percent Project, a policy initiative aimed at accelerating economic growth in the U.S.
Christie helped raise campaign funds for Bush, who was elected in 2000 and then again in 2004 — but without winning New Jersey. Bush appointed Christie as U.S. attorney in New Jersey in 2001. Christie held that job until late 2008, after Barack Obama beat the GOP nominee Sen. John McCain.
Now, it’s the governor who is the up-and-coming figure in the Republican Party, using the Bush name for a political boost.
Christie stuck to a familiar script on Tuesday, bragging to a receptive crowd about how he cut spending in New Jersey, capped property taxes and reformed public employee benefits. He said he’s now seeking to cut income taxes amid private-sector job growth because “we can say ‘yes’ to the right things” once finances are righted.
The speech also stuck to the “New Jersey comeback” theme that Christie has used as a foundation for selling the $32.1 billion budget he introduced in February, a spending plan that calls for about $2 billion in new spending thanks to forecasted economic growth.
Christie said New Jersey can be a model for the rest of the country because of the work he’s doing on the budget and taxes.
“If you can do this in New Jersey, you can do it anywhere,” he told a crowd that also included several other governors and New York Jets owner Woody Johnson.
But the governor left out some of the finer details about New Jersey, like an unemployment rate that still trails the national average despite the growth under Christie.
The governor also didn’t say that despite the new 2 percent cap on property tax levies, average property tax bills increased to a record high in New Jersey in 2011, while property tax relief from Trenton remained at the lower levels Christie enacted after taking office in 2010.
And when Christie referred to his signature 10 percent across-the-board income tax cut proposal, he didn’t make it clear that the cut would be phased in over three years, with the first installment only measuring about $183 million in the new budget.
But when it came to talking about federal issues, Christie didn’t hold back, particularly on his criticism of the Obama administration, which is pushing for higher taxes on the wealthy.
“I’ve never seen a less optimistic time in my lifetime in this country,” Christie said. “People wonder why, I think it’s because government is now telling them to stop dreaming, to stop striving, (saying) we’ll take care of you.”
“We’re turning into a paternalistic entitlement society,” he said. “That will not just bankrupt us financially, it will bankrupt us morally.”
Christie then said he wants New Jersey to be held up as an example of the alternative under the growth effort the Bush center is pushing.
“I hope that we’re going to be one of the flagships in the Bush institute’s 4 percent growth plan because if we are … it will mean there will be more money, more hope, more aspirations in the hearts of our children and our grandchildren than there are today and that’s what will make the 21st century the second American century,” he said.
