Murphy's Law of Budgeting - Take Two

Well, I sure got it wrong!

What I thought was a triumph for New Jersey governor Phil Murphy - getting a budget passed and avoiding a shutdown - has actually turned out to be a defeat for him.  Murphy may have gotten increased taxes on the the super-rich and may have gotten more revenue from a tax on corporations, but what he really wanted was a permanent tax on those making more than one million dollars a year, not five million as passed, and he got neither.  If anyone got everything he wanted, it was Stephen Sweeney, the less progressive Democratic Senate president.  Murphy may have to go back to the legislature to ask for more money for his priorities, but his proprieties are not Sweeney's . . . and Sweeney's top priority is cutting public-employee pensions, something Murphy did not campaign on.

Murphy didn't make concessions on the budget because he wanted to avoid state beach closures. He made them because he didn't want to play politics and remain above the political rancor.  In avoiding a fight, he ceded much of his power to Sweeney, who now holds all the cards.  Murphy can propose the most ambitious liberal agenda in New Jersey history and Sweeney can put the brakes on any or all of it without so much as lifting a finger. 

And the taxes that were passed, all of which are temporary and some of which expire before the next gubernatorial election, may hurt Democratic chances not to keep the New Jersey legislature but to win back Congress.  New Jersey Republicans are tying the state tax increases to Democrats running for U.S. House and Senate seats using the old "birds of a feather" argument; if we can expect higher taxes on "hard-working families" and the like from Democrats in Trenton, we can expect New Jersey Democratic candidates for Congress to back the same sort of punitive taxes in Washington.  That argument almost worked for New Jersey Republican Christine Todd Whitman when she ran against Democratic Bill Bradley for U.S. Senate in 1990 and made Governor Jim Florio's unpopular tax agenda an issue.  She came very close to winning Bradley's Senate seat.  Three years later, she was elected governor of New Jersey.  

Whether New Jersey congressional candidates and Trenton Democrats are birds of a feather, Phil Murphy's administration isn't a turkey just yet.  He's already accomplished a good deal of his efforts to roll back the conservative agenda of Chris Christie, and he's still in a good position to get more done.  But he has to take on Sweeney and realize that Sweeney answers to him, not the other way around.  He has to be more political and less diplomatic; the New Jersey governorship isn't a job where you smooth things out with charm and grace, like being ambassador to Germany, Murphy's last (and first) political job (which he was appointed, not elected, to). 

As for me . . . well, I'm obviously not good at getting some things right.  It's obvious that there's more to Phil Murphy - and in some cases, less - than I originally thought.  I haven't been this embarrassed since I thought Al Franken would survive a sex scandal.  I hope Murphy becomes more effective as he grows more into his job.  There's still a lot more for him to do.  But for now, when it comes to power in Trenton, it's Steve Sweeney's world; Murphy is merely signing legislation in it.