McGreevey & Dean: Perfect Together

Comes now our Borrower-Taxer-Spender in chief, the right Honorable James E. McGreevey, holding forth on a subject about with he knows absolutely nothing: "Fiscal responsibility". Quoth the Guv: "When did fiscal irresponsibility replace social intolerance as the message of the Republican party?"

Social intolerance, eh? Presumably, Hizonor refers here to the unwillingness of many in the GOP to "tolerate" things like partial birth abortion, gay marriage, and the like.

 True, many Republicans – nationally, anyway – believe that "traditional values" – you know, those hoary, horribly Politically Incorrect notions, such as honesty, integrity, fidelity, chastity, patriotism, and the like – serve us well and should not be lightly abandoned. They don't have much patience for the assertion that "choice" is a value, of itself, without regard to the consequences of the "choices" being made. And while they might be uncomfortable with some things some people enjoy doing, they would be a lot more "tolerant" of those things if the people doing them did them privately, behind closed doors, and stopped bragging about having done them.

Many Republicans ARE "intolerant" of those who believe that there's a difference between racial profiling and racial preferences. They're "intolerant" of those who believe that public sex is constitutionally protected but that public displays of religion are not. They're "intolerant" of those who shed oceans of tears for vicious murderers facing capital punishment but who can find not an ounce of compassion for unborn children.

And on "fiscal responsibility", this Governor demonstrates almost Clintonian levels of shamelessness. Is there any depth of fiscal irresponsibility this Administration has failed to plumb?

McGreevey came to office pledging not to raise taxes. He hadn't even been inaugurated when he got the Dems in the Legislature to cut a deal with the departing "Republican" regime to break that promise, raising the utility tax. Since that time, he has raised every tax in the state, with the exception of the income and sales tax. He has raised every "fee" in the state, using the money not to offset the costs of services, but to bloat spending.

And he has borrowed. Oh, how he has borrowed. After pillorying the Whitman Administration – properly, I might add – for its obscene borrowing, he no sooner took office than he raised the ante, and worse. At least the "Republicans" got assets – land, schools, stocks – when they borrowed. McGreevey indebted our kids for the next thirty years to fund general revenues. And he did it without seeking the victims' ... er, voters' consent, as the Constitution unambiguously requires (our Supreme Court's typically nonsensical opinion to the contrary notwithstanding).

McGreevey increased spending at twice to three times the rate of inflation, massively increased taxes despite an ironclad promise not to do so, and unconstitutionally borrowed billions to fund current spending. McGreevey is to "fiscal responsibility" what Bill Clinton was to "marital fidelity".

Indeed, when New Jersey Democrats bellyache about deficits, it's hard to take them seriously. After all, was it not New Jersey's own Robert Torricelli who cast the deciding vote AGAINST the Balance Budget Amendment? Is not New Jersey's own Jon Corzine essentially a socialist?

McGreevey's preferred candidate, Howard Dean, is right on message. Dean wants to repeal the entirety of the Bush tax cuts, which cuts helped produce economic growth at an astonishing 8% rate. Dean apparently believes that those tax cuts disproportionately benefited "the rich". If, by that, he means people who live in New Jersey, he's right.

Dean believes government is too small, taxes too low, regulation too unobtrusive. He continues to believe that we would be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in power, murdering, raping, torturing, and tyrannizing 25 million Iraqis, all the while providing funding and sanctuary for terrorists. Dean makes John Kerry look positively macho by comparison.

(Incidentally, to prove that some Republicans, if no (New Jersey) Democrats, still retain a degree of honesty, let's be clear: in castigating the Bush Administration for profligacy, Jimmy has a point. The education bill (why the feds should be involved at all is not patent), the farm bill, the energy bill, the prescription drug benefit – to name but a few – constitute foolish expansions of federal spending. Perhaps, as respects the latter, the ultimate result will be more individual responsibility for health care expenditures, a Good Thing. But little good can be said about the massive spending increases and half trillion dollar deficits which make Clinton's budgets look restrained by comparison. Where is the balanced budget amendment now that it's really needed? It's one thing to increase security or military spending in wartime; it's quite another to spend tens of billions on farm subsidies, giving "pork" spending a whole new perspective.)

Howard Dean SHOULD be the Democratic candidate. He best articulates the positions of the angry, profligate, envious, isolationist, pacifist, irresponsible left. Indeed, unlike the McGreeveyites, he gets some points for honesty, usually saying what he means and meaning what he says, however wacky it might be. He stands unabashedly for weakness abroad and massive expansion of government at home. Unlike the McGreeveyites, he has the courage to honestly say that he will massively increase taxes to pay for his unprecedented expansion of government.

As wrongheaded and foolish as Dean's principles might be, he at least enunciates them honestly. McGreevey? That he can even utter the words "fiscal responsibility" with a straight face indicates that he learned one Clinton lesson well: how to be utterly shameless.