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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 10K a day who wrote (71062)	7/1/2006 3:31:40 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

And even in New Jersey, where politics can often be a contact sport, the vitriol that has surrounded the budget debate has been noteworthy. Earlier this week, a legislator had to break up a shoving match during a committee meeting and Mr. Corzine, in a bit of gamesmanship, ordered a cot for his office in a maneuver that aides said demonstrated his resolve to stay at the State House until he had a budget deal. Negotiations continued in an effort to meet a midnight deadline on Friday, but Mr. Corzine said today that talks had broken down between him and Mr. Roberts, with the sides having agreed on all but about $1 billion in spending cuts and revenue increases. Mr. Corzine has said that he believes the increase in the sales tax will generate about $1.1 billion. Going into this week’s discussions, New Jersey had missed the June 30 budget deadline three times in the past five years. But no governor has ever ordered a shutdown, according to the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services, the official research arm of the state Legislature. “New Jersey has experienced budget delays before,” said David P. Rebovich, managing director of the Rider University Institute for New Jersey Politics. “But never a shutdown that will move forward and there may be political consequences.” Already Republican lawmakers have begun to seize on the issue. “The Democrats that run the Legislature had 101 days to enact the governor’s proposed budget, modify the budget that was provided to them, or propose one of their own,” said State Senator Robert E. Littell, a Republican from Sussex County, who was referring to the number of days since Mr. Corzine’s budget address on March 21. “Yet they have done neither. Instead, the have subjected the people of New Jersey to a State House version of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.” On Friday night, about two hours before the deadline, Mr. Roberts appealed to Mr. Corzine to abandon his plan to order the shutdown. He compared the prospect of a shutdown to legislators having “a gun placed to our head.” “We urge this governor to retreat from the precipice and not push the state over the edge into the uncharted waters of a government shutdown,” Mr. Roberts said.