RUSH: Chris Christie, New Jersey governor, has frozen spending. The state’s budget is in shambles. He has sliced into the school surpluses, the New Jersey transit subsidies. The Democrats are furious. They’re furious because he’s doing exactly what he promised he would do. This is the common sense we’ve been waiting for. We weren’t waiting for somebody to lower the seas; we were waiting for an elected official in an executive branch to lower the sea of red ink and to get some sensibility back to budgeting. We were waiting for a leader with guts to heal the spending sickness that grips bureaucrats and big spenders in legislature after legislature after legislature. This is the kind of thing the tea party people are demanding.
And this, my friends, I hope is just the beginning. Every state is going to have to face tough decisions and they’re going to be state workers, many of them union workers, they’re going to get laid off. They can’t keep bailing them out from the federal government. It isn’t gonna fly. Budgets are going to have to be balanced to avoid bankruptcy, and every time a state’s governor takes the lead in returning fiscal sanity to his or her state, Barack Obama’s going to be made to look that much weaker and that much more ineffective. Governor Chris Christie, there is time to save the country. This is what a rescue looks like. This is exactly what a rescue looks like. And, by the way, I have to point this out, ladies and gentlemen, because I’m a sharp observer of things. Christie’s moves of all these budget freezes, during these recent snow emergencies, they told all nonessential federal and local government employees to stay home. Now, in Washington that totaled 240,000 people, a vast majority of them turned out to be nonessential. This is inescapable logic. So why do we have any nonessential government workers at any level? Two-hundred-forty-thousand for three straight days stayed home during the blizzards in Washington and they made the mistake of telling us all nonessential federal local government employees stay home, and look how many of them there are.
I got an idea to balance our budget. It’s just taking right after the model here of Chris Christie. Do you realize, folks, how ridiculous and unsustainable and obscene it is that we have been presented a budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit, spending $3.4 trillion, $3.6 trillion? Three-point-six trillion with a $1.6 trillion deficit? One-point-six trillion? When Ronald Reagan left office in 1989 the federal budget was not even one trillion. It was close, but it wasn’t even one trillion. Now, what was the federal budget in 2007? Which was a pretty good year, was it not? Unemployment was down, Social Security was working out just fine, it was $2.5 trillion. We could balance the budget right now if we would just reduce spending to what it was in 2007. Are you trying to tell me that we cannot forget what we have spent the following three years, just the past three years, the country will not function if we do that? This is so absurd, it is ridiculous that we are facing this. But at least Governor Christie is showing the way. The state’s budget is in shambles. The liberals are squealing like stuck pigs, but he’s doing exactly what people elected him to do.
‘The governor also cut state subsidies to New Jersey Transit, saying it needs to become fiscally efficient. ‘Revisit its rich union contracts,’ Christie said. ‘And they may also have to consider service reductions or fare increases.” Ladies and gentlemen, is it wrong to love another man? Because I love Chris Christie. Taking on rich union contracts, this is what is going to have to be done at the state and city level to balance these budgets in the states and cities and counties. That’s where all of this waste is, that’s where all the stimulus money went that was spent last year. It went to bail out states to make sure that public employee union people were not laid off. But the day is coming. So the Obama budget has two-and-a-half trillion dollars of taxes, that’s what they estimate, with $3.6, 3.8 trillion dollars of spending.
Thomas G. Donlan of Barron’s, February 8th issue, page 47: tax revenues expected to reach two-and-a-half trillion dollars next year, pretty much what the government spent in 2007. So? 2007 was a good year, pretty good year. Three years ago, just three years ago before the liberals took Congress, this is the key, 2007 is when Pelosi and the Democrats took over the House to join the Democrats in the Senate, and you look at the explosion since 2007. They turned a manageable deficit into a $1.6 trillion nightmare. So we have a really solid idea here, a rallying cry that could unite the Republicans and the conservatives and the tea party and the independents and even some liberals, those who pay taxes. Just roll back spending to 2007 levels before Pelosi took over. Roll back spending to 2007 before Pelosi and the Democrats wrecked the US budget. In other words, roll back Pelosi. Say it together, folks, say it: Roll back Pelosi! Say it with me: roll back Pelosi. Because that’s where the damage began, and it has been expanded by Obama and Democrat control of the Senate. It is obscene. Roll back Pelosi.