Chris Christie critics blast his presidential platform

Speaking this week in New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Christie said if he ran for president and won, in his first 100 days in office he would simplify the country's tax system and pass policies to expand America's energy independence. Two of the governor's critics were quick to respond.

They said Christie's track record on both of those issues in the Garden State has been terrible.

"I find it fascinating that his first 100 days as president, he'd redo the tax structure in the nation, when he's had almost six years in New Jersey and he has done nothing to restructure a broken tax structure in New Jersey," said Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald (D-Voorhees). "All you have to do is look at New Jersey to realize that when you talk tough but you don't follow through, it really becomes nothing more than BS."

Taxes in New Jersey were raised 115 times in the eight years before he became governor in 2010, Christie said in his State of the State Address last month. He said that caused people and businesses to flee the state.

"The higher our taxes are, the fewer people and businesses will come to New Jersey and the more who will consider leaving," Christie said then.

Greenwald said the state's stagnant economy, and high unemployment and foreclosure rates, tell the true story of the governor's economic policies.

Although after his New Hampshire speech Christie said he wasn't breaking new ground, one of the Garden State's top environmentalists took aim at the governor's hypothetical presidential plan to pass a national energy policy.

"In New Jersey he blocked offshore wind (and) he crashed our solar market," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "He's all bluff and bluster, but when it comes to actually delivering for the people of New Jersey, he's sold them out time and time again. He puts out enough wind to run a windmill and enough hot air to fill a pipeline."

The governor also supports the Keystone XL pipeline and pulled the Garden State out of the multistate Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Tittel said.

New Jersey is No. 3 in the country in the use of solar power, said the governor in his State of the State speech.