[Vision2020] Cannibalize the Future

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>


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April 12, 2012
Cannibalize the Future By PAUL
KRUGMAN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

One general rule of modern politics is that the people who talk most about
future generations — who go around solemnly declaring that we’re burdening
our children with debt — are, in practice, the people most eager to
sacrifice our future for short-term political gain. You can see that
principle at work in the House Republican budget, which starts with dire
warnings about the evils of deficits, then calls for tax cuts that would
make the deficit even bigger, offset only by the claim to have a secret
plan to make up for the revenue losses somehow or other.

And you can see it in the actions of Chris Christie, the governor of New
Jersey, who talks loudly about acting responsibly but may actually be the
least responsible governor the state has ever had.

Mr. Christie’s big move — the one that will define his record — was his
unilateral decision back in 2010 to cancel work that was already under way
on a new rail tunnel linking New Jersey with New York. At the time, Mr.
Christie claimed that he was just being fiscally responsible, while critics
said that he had canceled the project just so he could raid it for funds.

Now the independent Government Accountability Office has weighed in with a
report <http://gao.gov/products/GAO-12-344> on the controversy, and it
confirms everything the critics were saying.

Much press coverage of the new
report<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/nyregion/report-disputes-christies-reason-for-halting-tunnel-project-in-2010.html?hpw=&pagewanted=all>focuses,
understandably, on the evidence that Mr. Christie made false
statements about the tunnel’s financing and cost. The governor asserted
that the projected costs were rising sharply; the report tells us that this
simply wasn’t true. The governor claimed that New Jersey was being asked to
pay for 70 percent of a project that would shower benefits on residents of
New York; in fact, the bulk of the financing would have come either from
the federal government or from the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey, which collects revenue from residents of both states.

But while it’s important to document Mr. Christie’s mendacity, it’s even
more important to understand the utter folly of his decision. The new
report drives home just how necessary, and very much overdue, the tunnel
project was and is. Demand for public transit is rising across America,
reflecting both population growth and shifting preferences in an era of
high gas prices. Yet New Jersey is linked to New York by just two
single-track tunnels built a century ago — tunnels that run at 100 percent
of capacity during peak hours. How could this situation not call for new
investment?

Well, Mr. Christie insisted that his state couldn’t afford the cost. As
we’ve already seen, however, he apparently couldn’t make that case without
being dishonest about the numbers. So what was his real motive?

One answer is that the governor is widely assumed to have national
ambitions, and the Republican base hates government spending in general
(unless it’s on weapons). And it hates public transportation in particular.
Indeed, three other Republican governors — in Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin —
have also canceled public transportation projects supported by federal
funds. The difference, of course, is that New Jersey is a densely populated
state, most of whose residents live either in Greater New York or Greater
Philadelphia; given that position, public transit is the state’s lifeblood,
and refusing to invest in such transportation will strangle the state’s
economy.

Another answer is that canceling the tunnel allowed Mr. Christie to divert
funds from that project — as his critics have said, to cannibalize the
investment — and put them into the state highway fund, thereby avoiding the
need to raise the state’s tax on gasoline. New Jersey gas taxes, by the
way, are lower in real terms than at any point in the state’s history. But,
as a candidate, Mr. Christie said that he wouldn’t raise those taxes, so
cannibalizing the tunnel helped him avoid embarrassment.

The crucial point about both of these explanations is that they stand Mr.
Christie’s narrative about himself on its head. The governor poses as a man
willing to make hard choices for the future, but what he actually did was
sacrifice the future for the sake of personal political advantage. He
catered to national Republican prejudices that are completely at odds with
New Jersey’s needs; he cared more about avoiding embarrassment over a
misguided campaign pledge than about serving an urgent public need.

Unfortunately, Mr. Christie’s behavior is all too typical these days.

America used to be a country that thought big about the future. Major
public projects, from the Erie Canal to the interstate highway system, used
to be a well-understood component of our national greatness. Nowadays,
however, the only big projects politicians are willing to undertake — with
expense no object — seem to be wars. Funny how that works.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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