After a six day shutdown the New Jersey government Governor Jon Corzine and the state legislature have agreed to a new budget.  The governor who made his fortune by working for Wall Street firm, Goldman Sachs has shown far less financial acumen than the voters expected. 

In an effort to close a $4.5 billion dollar budget deficit, Corzine pushed for a 1% increase in the state sales tax.  In highly taxed Northeast that’s all the residents needed was another tax increase.  While Corzine won the battle as he got his tax increase he may have lost the war as he had to agree to devote half the money raised by the higher taxes to property tax relief.  So for all of this he gets half of what he wanted while the state lost millions in tax revenues from the closed casinos,  the lottery and other businesses and earned the enmity of almost everyone.

Lost in the discussion was the fact that the governor and the democratically controlled legislature should have been trying to cut spending rather than cutting deals. 

All I can say is that the road to hell is paved with tax and spend liberals.

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