The final train wreckage of time will likely not reveal a New Jersey budget as that single offending piece of timber on the tracks. The self-sustaining culture of government, wherein elected officials who simultaneously hold public jobs ratify spending for the rest of us, will probably emerge in the aftermath of a full investigation – if there’s anyone left at that point to investigate – as at least a major culprit.

But according to Governor Phil Murphy, Democrats in Trenton are doing their level best to avert total disaster or to at least assist taxpayers beset by bills on average totaling $9,300 annually. In an ad released by his Stronger Fairer Forward PAC, the governor – standing in a Norman Rockwell neighborhood – gushes, “That [American] dream is out of reach for too many. That’s why we’re cutting taxes and making New Jersey more affordable.”

Making New Jersey more affordable.

It would be hard to find someone who actually believes that statement, even as Murphy, ever the effervescent Wall Street salesman, this week heads toward voting sessions in both the state Assembly and Senate, certain of lawmakers in his party passing the $48.9 billion behemoth that is this year’s state budget.

A strictly partisan divide has Democrats making a case that Murphy’s budget (the first on his watch without political foe Senate President Steve Sweeney obstructing him; more on that in a minute) imperfectly but adequately balances making the public payroll, setting aside some surplus cash, and giving individual lawmakers a chance to champion different special projects in their respective districts.

According to John Reitmeyer of NJ Spotlight: “Lawmakers last year tacked on $1.6 billion in new spending eight days before the state’s July 1 deadline for a new budget, with millions of that going to pet projects and other add-ons that are often referred to in the State House as ‘Christmas-tree items,’ a phrase that invokes the image of state largesse as a bounty of cheerful holiday gifts….”

Editor’s Note: The legislature subsequently passed out of the Assembly and Senate budget committees a $50.6 billion budget.

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