RUSH: Marie in North New Jersey, welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: Rush, it’s just a question, a quickie, and it’s a change of pace. I thought yesterday when you closed your program you said you had something interesting about Governor Christie.
RUSH: Yeah. He doesn’t like sea turtle ordinances, either.
CALLER: (laughing) Oh, you’re kidding. Is that what it was about?
RUSH: No, I’m just kidding. He made a great speech. I’m glad you actually reminded me of this by calling. He made a great speech on February 24th at the statehouse in Trenton to the New Jersey league of municipalities, and I’ve got some sound bites. I’ve got some excerpts of it. Marie, thanks for calling and reminding me. Chris Christie, the new governor of New Jersey. Let’s just get started in listening to what he told the New Jersey League of Municipalities. He’s talking here to mayors here and town managers and so forth.
CHRISTIE: Our citizens are already the most overtaxed citizens in America. The public appetite for ever increasing taxes has reached an end. So now when we freeze $475 million in school aid, I’m hearing the reverberations from school boards saying, ‘Well now you’re just going to force us to raise taxes.’ I’m tired of hearing school superintendents and school board members complain that there are no other options other than raising property taxes. There are other options. There has to be parity between what’s happening in the real world and what’s happening in the public sector world. The money doesn’t grow on trees outside this building or outside your municipal building. It comes from the hardworking people of our communities who are suffering and hurting right now.
RUSH: And the next bite, February 24th, this year, Trenton, New Jersey, Governor Christie targets the political class.
CHRISTIE: The political class — which unfortunately for us all of us are a member of. The political class is lagging behind the public on this. The public is ready to hear that tough choices have to be made. They’re not going to like it. Let me not confuse the two. But they are ready to hear the truth. In fact, they find it refreshing to hear the truth and the pabulum that gets spewed sometimes about, ‘Don’t worry, I can save you from the pain,’ they’ve been hearing that for a decade. As we’ve borrowed and spent and taxed our way into oblivion. We have done every quick fix in the book that you can do, and now we are left literally holding the bag.
RUSH: This is amazingly great! One more bite. No difference between Republicans and Democrats, eh? Huh? Do any Democrats say this?
CHRISTIE: You all know that these raises that are being given to public employees of all stripes we can’t afford, you all know the state can’t continue to spend money that it doesn’t have, and you all know that the appetite for tax increases among our constituents has come to an end. And so the path to reform and success is clear. We know what it is. We just have to have the courage to go there. What we’re doing is showing people that government can work again for them, not for us. Government has worked for the political class for much too long. There’s no time left. We have no room left to borrow. We have no room left to tax.
RUSH: Right on, right on, right on. That’s Governor Christie and that’s why he won: A Republican in New Jersey.