Bob Herbert is right. Building a tunnel should not be beyond the combined powers of the United States government and New Jersey. Chris Christie and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood should find a way to get this thing built.
Governor Christie should ask LaHood to approach the White House with a “cash for cuts” proposal for the tunnel. That is, the feds should offer more cash, but only by matching the cuts that Christie can wring from New Jersey’s public-sector unions.
For example, if unions agree next week to shave $1 billion off New Jersey’s future pension obligations by, say, increasing the retirement age, the feds would reward New Jersey with another $1 billion in tunnel cash now. (People can fool with the percentages; maybe the match shouldn’t be dollar-for-dollar, but you get the idea.)
As I wrote in the other newspaper Wednesday, New Jersey’s pension obligation is set to grow by $39 billion over the next 15 years. So there’s plenty of places to find a few stray billions in savings — if New Jersey’s public-sector workers want to help build a future, and help their construction-union brethren in the private-sector contracting world to get jobs.
A workable deal here would be a model for future federal aid to states (as well a nice example of bi-partisan cooperation). Washington should stop offering no-strings-attached stimulus so that states, cities, towns, and school districts can try to maintain their bubble-era compensation programs.
Instead, the White House and Congress should help states and other public entities that prove they can help themselves, by cutting back their future obligations so that they can start making — and keep making — the infrastructure investments that future generations (and ours, too!) need.
P.S. Paul Krugman also wrote about the tunnel Friday. It is wrong for Krugman — and for Herbert, too — to pin the blame for the tunnel’s possible demise on Christie. It was former governor Jon Corzine who broke ground for the project without having a completion plan in place. And it was Corzine who tolerated the out-of-control spending that has hobbled New Jersey’s capacity to build new stuff.
— Nicole Gelinas is contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.
You can't really blame Krugman and Herbert -- they always blame the guy who's currently in office for any economic mess. That's why Christie gets blamed and not Corzine. It's why Obama gets blamed and not Bush.
Wait.
I'm getting word that they do blame Bush and not Obama. My mistake.
That makes Krugman and Herbert hacks.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy are federal dollars involved in this anyway? Who benefits from this besides NJ and NY? If they can't come up with the money, why should the taxpayers of the other 48 states foot the bill?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNO! No more deals between the federal government and a state. No more "rewards" from the federal government!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHi there NE Corridor. I'm someone who lives in a state which doesn't lie between DC and the Canadian border, and between the Ohio River and The Atlantic. I have a request:
Stop spending my money on your roads. If you want a new tunnel, pay for it yourself.
The reason Christie stopped the project is because the state of New Jersey does not have the money to spend on the tunnel. Of course, we should just borrow. That worked out so well last time. I know this is terribly gauche and unsophisticated, but it seems to me that spending money we don't have isn't working all that well.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy daughter lived in Hoboken, NJ and worked in NYC for about three years. I used to do her income tax returns and the thing that struck me was how almost all of her NJ income tax liability was wiped out by the deduction for what she was paying on her NY State non-resident return. This makes me wonder why NJ would want to make it easier for their residents to work in NY by paying a large chunk of the cost of the tunnel. It seems to me that the financial benefits would largely accrue to NY.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think it's a clever move (and even should make the greens happy :-) to get companies to move out of the NYC concrete jungle to the green hills of NJ.
If NYC wants to keep their companies, they can arrange transit.
Way to go, governor!
p.s. have you noticed that it costs more to ship a ton of equipment from Paris to Nice than it does LA to Chicago or Baltimore? And don't ask about Paris to Vienna.. truck traffic in Europe has made driving a bad experience. It turns out our unified truck-rail shipping system is optimized for freight and benefits everyone. Where moving people with trains only benefits a few. And you really can't have both (as Europe has proved).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOkay, so maybe this isn't the tunnel to nowhere. How do those of us that live in flyover country know? And yet, we are asked to contribute. No, we are forced to contribute.
We, in Council Bluffs, have a nice new pedestrian bridge that joins us to Omaha. Thanks America; we forced you to contribute to our little bridge to somewhere. But if it was such a great idea, why didn't the folks in Iowa and Nebraska build it?
Where does this end? Where did it start? I guess President Jefferson's veto of a roads bill as unConstitutional was a bit extreme; and then he goes on to buy the whole middle of the United States from France by executive fiat.
Gov. Christie says N.J. can't afford it. I assume he means that, measured against all of the other responsibilities of his state, this project doesn't make the cut. Let it be. When grand and great projects are planned one of the foundational principals should be that the budget is cast into stone before the project is. Another principal should be that the people that live with it, and benefit from it, should design it and pay for it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is not "beyond the power" of the U.S. and NJ to build the tunnel. But that doesn't mean that it is fiscally responsible to do so at this point.
Are the cost/benefits worth it? Why should federal $$ be spent on this? Can NJ afford this right now?
You are falling into the trap of believing that a big gov't project should go forward "just because." Also, I'm not sure why you believe the federal gov't should be borrowing money to pay for this. The people who chose to work in NYC and live in NJ (which would be about 95% of the users of this tunnel) want me to pay for their shorter commute? Why is that right? Pay for this with bonds and tolls if it is really necessary.
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