When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced he was killing the The Trans-Hudson Passenger Rail Tunnel, a project 20 years in the making, he framed as some incredibly responsible and brave decision making on his part. It represented the new, post Tea Party GOP brand. The project was wasteful and something New Jersey simply couldn't afford!
As it turns out, nearly every metric he pronounced to defend this move was a flat out lie. Ahead of a new GAO report to be released this week detailing his many falsehoods, the NY Times reports:
"Canceling the tunnel, then the largest public works project in the nation, helped shape Mr. Christie’s profile as a rising Republican star, an enforcer of fiscal discipline in a country drunk on debt. But the report is likely to revive criticism that his decision, which he said was about “hard choices” in tough economic times, was more about avoiding the need to raise the state’s gasoline tax, which would have violated a campaign promise. The governor subsequently steered $4 billion earmarked for the tunnel to the state’s near-bankrupt transportation trust fund, traditionally financed by the gasoline tax."
You see? He did do exactly what needed to be done. For himself. The congestion of physical interstate commerce the project would have alleviated extends far beyond New Jersey or New York.
Steve Benen is appalled:
Steve Benen is appalled:
"Even at the time, Christie's decision on this project in 2010 was hard to understand. Conservatives, who've become increasingly hostile towards American infrastructure improvements, cheered the move, but from a substantive perspective, the governor's decision was fairly characterized as "destructive and incredibly foolish."
But this new report casts that decision in an even more damaging light. The Government Accountability Office is a non-partisan research/audit arm of Congress, and it's reporting this week that Christie's rationale for his strange decision wasn't even true. It was a mistake to scrap a major public works project during a weak economy; it was a bigger mistake to explain the move with dishonest claims."
This is big stuff. Gov. Christie, in an act of supreme political selfishness, quite literally damaged a whole sector of the American economy. On purpose.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons the Governor thought better of entering the 2012 race for POTUS.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons the Governor thought better of entering the 2012 race for POTUS.
