“After watching this reckless address by Governor Christie it is clear that he will leave New Jersey in far worse fiscal shape than what he inherited. Whether it’s underfunded pensions, underfunded transit, underfunded schools, or his record ten credit downgrades, Gov. Christie is nothing but an underperformer whose greatest accomplishment will be his ability to tie up traffic.

“With recent reports that 37% of New Jerseyans struggling just to get by, this budget does nothing to help working men and women. Per usual, Gov. Christie is only concerned with taking care of his wealthy friends.”

On school funding: “Gov. Christie’s changes to the school funding formula will be a devastating blow to our school districts and students. He has $8 billion more funding available than he did for his first budget, yet he flat funds school aid again.

“We know where he stands — he is anti-public schools. He wants a parallel corporate charter school system that drains resources from our public schools and funnels them to his Wall Street cronies.

“The only failure of the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) is Chris Christie’s absolute refusal to fund it. The ‘disaster’ he outlined is because of him, and him alone. No amount of finger-wagging will change his dismal record of short-changing New Jersey’s future.

“Finally providing full funding SFRA would help solve another problem plaguing New Jerseyans — property taxes.  Year after year, our Governor has underfunded education, forcing our school districts to pick up the slack.”

On supplemental transportation budget: “While our roads and bridges are in desperate need of repair, Gov. Christie’s sudden infrastructure concern falls woefully short. If he was serious about repairing our crumbling roads and bridges, he wouldn’t have given a $1 billion tax break to the wealthiest 3,500 New Jerseyans with his ill-advised estate tax cut.

On health care: “Once again, Gov. Christie ignored the looming crisis we face by President Trump’s ongoing threat to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Despite a recent report by the New Jersey Policy Perspective that outlined how 1.1 million New Jerseyans would lose health care benefits; we’d lose $4.2 billion in federal funding; and 86,000 jobs would be lost, Christie said not one word.

“To preempt the devastation of an ACA repeal, we should be utilizing Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey as a catalyst for enacting single-payer healthcare. A single-payer healthcare system would provide coverage for all New Jerseyans, for all ailments and dramatically cut costs.”