Move by Christie ends budget showdown; governor to pare down state spending plan Watch video
TRENTON — Ending a budget showdown, Gov. Chris Christie will use the line-item veto to pare down the $30.6 billion spending bill and then sign it into law this afternoon.
"I have aggressively used the line-item veto," Christie said at a 5 p.m. news conference. "My budget is constitutionally balanced."
Christie will take a red pen to the $30.6 billion budget that lawmakers passed along partisan lines by eliminating and reducing some spending. The final total of the budget is $29.7 billion. The reductions do not require legislative approval.
The use of a line-item veto allows the bill to take effect before tonight's midnight deadline to have a new budget in place.
Democrats in the Senate are already planning to come back next week and challenge some of the reductions. They will need a two-thirds majority to override the individual line item vetoes, an unlikely vote that will require some Republicans to cross the aisle.
The move by Christie avoids a possible government shutdown after speculation swarmed that he could have vetoed the budget and sent it back to lawmakers for another vote. In a statement last night, Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said the governor was considering all of his options.
A conditional veto would likely have been met by resistance from members of both political parties.
Democrats, who authored the budget, would have opposed reductions in public assistance programs. Hardline Republicans would have opposed the inclusion of additional funding for urban schools, a $447 million increase ordered by the state Supreme Court.
“I am not going to allow the Supreme Court to tell me how I should vote,” said state Sen. Michael Doherty (R-Warren), one of Trenton’s most vocal opponents of the state’s school funding formula.
Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll (R-Morris) said he, like Doherty, does not want to vote for a budget that includes court-ordered funding for Abbott districts.
“That is about as close to an 'absolute no, under no circumstance' as I can get,” said Carroll.
By Ginger Gibson, Chris Megerian, Jarrett Renshaw/Statehouse Bureau
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