So, the rumor mill is running overtime with speculation that New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine is being considered for a cabinet position on President-elect Barack Obama’s team.
Specifically, he’s said to be under consideration for the position of secretary of the Treasury. The secretary of the Treasury is the chief economic adviser to the president and is the country’s chief financial officer. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the secretary is “responsible for formulating and recommending domestic and international financial, economic and tax policy, participating in the formulation of broad fiscal policies that have general significance for the economy, and managing the public debt.”
Corzine recently told reporters that while he wasn’t “angling” for a cabinet position, he certainly wouldn’t rule out accepting a position if one were offered. “I like what I do,” he told them of his job as New Jersey governor.
Which makes this whole thing so astounding on so many levels, I hardly know where to begin.
I’ll begin by a simple observation. Corzine may love what he does, but he’s just about the only one who loves what he does. The rest of us (and I know I’m making a sweeping generalization here) definitely don’t love what he does. The blush is so far off that rose, the petals have turned brown and fallen off, and all that’s left is a thorny stem.
I think we can agree that Corzine got elected largely on the basis of his background as CEO of Goldman Sachs, where he was successful until he got pushed out. Voters hoped he could bring his financial acumen to bear on this state’s dismal finances and do something about our horrendous budget deficits.
I think most of us would also agree that he has been spectacularly ineffective in doing that. The state has lost over a quarter million jobs, and is looking at a $4 billion revenue shortfall next year. It’s had huge deficits and shortfalls every year he’s been in office, by the way. The housing market is in the toilet, and foreclosures are at an all-time high. As Kenneth Goldstein, an economist for The Conference Board, told The Star-Ledger recently, “This isn’t a recession. This is something worse.”
Corzine, meanwhile, has been co-opted by the legislators and lobbyists in Trenton; the state workers union has cowed him; and he’s refused to do the one thing that would make a real difference — make significant cuts in the number of workers on the state payroll.
Instead, he’s come up with harebrained schemes like jacking up the tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway so high that only people in limousines or riding in state-owned cars with chauffeurs can afford to use them.
When he tried to sell that scheme in a series of town hall meetings around the state, the reaction was so negative you almost expected the crowds to come armed with scythes and pitchforks, chanting, “Burn the monster!”
It was so bad, in fact, that Corzine — who isn’t used to that kind of treatment from the proletariat — canceled most of the remaining town meetings on his schedule after holding only a few.
He kept on riding that toll hike horse even after his public relations debacle, though, and was still riding it when the Legislature finally slapped him down.
At this point, he’s frankly out of ideas. The best he could come up with in a recent speech was the possibility that the state could see some additional revenue under an Obama administration. He certainly couldn’t expect that if John McCain had won, after Corzine’s public and early endorsement of Hillary Clinton in April 2007, a full 19 months before the presidential election.
Considering that, you have to wonder why Obama would want him. I have mixed feelings about whether he should take the job if Obama offers it.
On the one hand, if Corzine moves to Washington, he’ll be out of our hair and maybe we can get someone in the governor’s chair who can actually move the ball down the field. On the other hand, while getting Corzine out of the state might be good for us, it would likely be a disaster for the country.
Putting a guy whose only solution to getting his own state out of its economic quagmire was raising tolls in charge of the whole nation’s economic, financial and tax policy is a recipe for disaster of near-biblical proportions.
Based on his track record of bankrupt ideas, Jon S. Corzine would not only allow drilling in the Alaskan wilderness (where Sarah Palin is said to be hanging out these days, presumably keeping an eye on Russia), he’d sell the whole deal to the highest bidder.
Exxon Mobil was fairly fond of George W. (Shrub) Bush and Dick Cheney, but they would absolutely love Jon S. Corzine.
And turning the nation’s interstate highways into toll roads? Not such a farfetched idea, considering his great ideas for reducing New Jersey’s deficit.
And your taxes? Fuggedaboudit! Under Corzine’s administration, state and local taxes have gone up at an unprecedented rate. And we’re not only talking about income and property tax here, taxes on nearly everything else have gone up as well, and if Corzine could figure out a way to tax the amount of time you spend in the bathroom, I think he’d do it.
So while Barack Obama hasn’t called to ask for my advice on this matter — yet, but I’m available for consultation — here it is anyway.
Even though it might be nice to send Jon S. Corzine on a road trip to Washington, I think we have to take one for the national team and urge Obama to leave our governor where he is and pick someone who has some actual ideas.
I understand that Joe the Plumber guy is angling for a cabinet position. He was such a big deal to everyone in the presidential campaign, he would probably get more accomplished than Jon S. “Do Nothing and Hope No One Notices” Corzine.
Gregory Bean is executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].