A Tunnel Too Far

No Christieporn this time, so we'll have to settle for Christierotica instead:

Declaring he would not move forward on a project he could not afford, Governor Chris Christie said today he was the one who put the brakes on the $8.7 billion trans-Hudson rail tunnel.

The governor, in a press briefing, said he liked the idea of the tunnel, but not if he can’t pay for it.

"And if I can’t pay for it, then we’ll have to consider other options," he said, making it clear for the first time the project was in serious jeopardy.

..."It went from $5 billion to $8.7 billion in what was clearly a rush by the Corzine administration to have gold shovels and put them the ground and try to get (former Governor Jon) Corzine re-elected. That obviously was less than successful," Christie said. "And I’m concerned that their evaluations of price of this project w[ere] as successful as his re-election campaign was."

I think I enjoy the part about Double-C's publicly accepting responsibility for "putting the brakes" on this presumeably popular mass transit project almost as much as his making no bones about why.  It's so....real.  It's something almost every "ordinary American" can identify with these days: "Yeah, I'd like to get that hot tub and gazebo for the back yard, but it can wait."  "Man, a sit&ride lawn mower would sure come in handy, but I really don't want to drop another twelve hundred bucks on the VISA; let's just save up for one instead."  "I know our kitchen looks like caca, honey; you're right, we do need to remodel it.  But Puddin' is going off to college next year, and tuitions aren't diminishing, y'know."

It's about what they used to claim feminism was about: Making choices.  Deferring gratification.  Acting responsibily.  Living within your means.  That's why Governor Christie is floating on 57% approval air in a filthy blue state like New Jersey.  It's authentic populism.

For Jersey Democrats, he might just as well have been grunting in tlinghan Hol:

Warning that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity may be squandered, state and federal elected officials today urged support for an $8.7 billion railway tunnel under the Hudson that could be killed over rising costs.

Gathered in front of a portal to the tunnel being built in North Bergen, Democratic Senators Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg joined other federal and state lawmakers to sharply criticize Governor Chris Christie's temporary suspension of the massive project.

"The message is pretty simple," said Lautenberg. "We don’t want to be just another parking lot for New York City and that’s what’s going to happen if we don’t get this tunnel done."

..."We need to find a way to make this work," said Menendez, adding that Christie always had known the project’s cost, but suddenly raised red flags after initially supporting it.

A "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity" to waste almost nine billion dollars on a typically dubious mass-trans boondoggle?  Lautenberg and Menendez might just as well be William Cody lamenting a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity to bag a buffalo on the nineteenth-century American plains.

Yeah, guys, I know, it sure would be cool to put another tunnel beneath the Hudson River.  Almost as cool as feeding more public sector business to your Big Labor butt-buddies.  But you're forgetting something: There isn't any money for it.  The credit cards are maxed out.  The collection calls from Beijing are starting to become annoying.  Some "cool stuff" is just gonna have to wait.

Maybe the "once-in-a-lifetime" jittering is Menendez looking at Christie's approval numbers, the current cycle's electoral ocean pulling ominously back from the shore, and his own re-election bid in '12.  It isn't that earmarks will go away (certainly not if the Dems retain the Senate), but that Menendez might not be around after a couple more years to take them out of the deep-fryer and toss them in the budget.

As for Lautenberg, well, he's eighty-six years old, so he doesn't have much of a lifetime left.

Kinda like the Hudson Hole.

Hyuk.