Christie 1, Schumer 0

from the NY Post... Gotta love the candor of Chris Christie. He SAYS what the middle class is THINKING.

Christie 1, Schumer 0
January 23, 2011

Sen. Chuck Schumer last week lit into New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for pulling the plug on that $8.7 billion trans-Hudson rail tunnel.

“A terrible, terrible decision,” Schumer told a Crain’s breakfast.

Schumer being Schumer, of course, he sees in Christie’s decision the coming of a national apocalypse — a “turning point,” he said, that historians will one day look back on as the day when we “stopped looking toward the future.”

Hyperbole, thy name is Chuck Schumer.

Fortunately, Chris Christie is not one to be intimidated, even by so formidable a presence as Chuck Schumer’s — and, even more fortunately, he can give as good as he gets.

Back when the governor called a halt to the project, he cited the fact that its cost had already swelled to $11 billion and counting — with his state on the hook for $2.7 billion, plus 50% of any cost overruns.

That would hike Jersey’s liability to more than $5 billion — money the troubled Garden State simply doesn’t have.

In response to Schumer, Christie noted the difference between a governor and a senator. “Their job is easy,” he said of lawmakers like Schumer. “They get to sit in front of microphones and bloviate. I’ve got to balance budgets.”

Asking where the money would come from, Christie added: “If [Schumer] wants to offer me $5 billion, then maybe we can have a conversation.

“Until then,” said the governor, “he should mind his manners on the other side of the Hudson River.”

Ouch — but point very well taken.

Senators — especially Democratic senators — love to go on about huge projects and the jobs they’d create.

But when it comes to explaining how to pay for them, they grow silent.

However badly the tunnel is needed, it does not justify a project that was already running as high as 60% over its already exorbitant projected budget.

With absolutely no end to the escalation in sight.

Chris Christie, unlike Chuck Schumer, recognized a boondoggle when he saw it.

And, unlike Schumer, his first instinct was to protect the taxpayers.