Fiscal Sanity Requires Courage

[Valin]

Real Clear Markets:

Diana Furchtgott-Roth
2/17/11

WASHINGTON--New Jersey Governor Chris Christie came to Washington on Wednesday and called on political leaders to get serious about cutting spending. Christie, who said he would not run for president, spoke to a standing-room only crowd at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think-tank.

"It's time to do really big things," he said. He explained that this doesn't mean high speed rail, free broadband, or electric cars. It means cutting state and federal spending, especially entitlements, or benefits that are embedded in law and don't require annual appropriations.

Christie, working with a Democratic legislature, cut spending by $1 billion shortly after he assumed office last year, and kept spending flat in fiscal year 2011. Although he didn't raise tax rates, tax receipts for the first six months of the fiscal year are coming in 4.5% higher than predicted, according to the New Jersey Department of the Treasury.

(Snip)

And once again Gov. Christie cut to the heart of the matter

We are IMO at a fork in the road, going down one road leads us to a much larger more intrusive government that does lots of things (both for and to us), down the other road leads to a limited federal government that pushes power down to a more local level. So the question is...which road?