As The Budget Hearings Continue, Governor Christie Is Yawning

Lawmakers in Trenton are continuing to hold a series of hearings on Governor Christie's proposed fiscal year 2013 budget.

But Christie is not exactly waiting on pins and needles, holding his breath to see what they do or say.

The Governor says "they're now having hearings, which generally doesn't accomplish much - and then when the hearings are over he'll sit down with Assembly and State Senate leaders and start talking…it is always my preference to negotiate a budget with the Legislature - and I would much rather negotiate a budget that we can agree on and get bipartisan support for- as we did in our first year - than to do it as we did it in our second year- where the Legislature passes a democratic-only budget and then I use the line item veto pen to bring it to fiscal sanity."

He says "I'd prefer not to do that - that's not my course of choice- it's a course that's available to me under the Constitution, and that I will absolutely utilize if I need to…but I'm really hopeful that we'll be able to negotiate a budget this year - and those negotiations will really start after the hearings are over."

When asked whether he expects a tough budget negotiation, Christie said "it's always tough to negotiate David, but it's not impossible- we've accomplished a lot of things negotiating with the Senate and the Assembly …it's my job not to decry how difficult this is - it's work - okay- and this is my job - so you're not going to hear me complain about it,  it's time to get to work - we'll get to work…one way or the other, we'll get a budget done - either they'll pass a budget that I'll use my line item veto pen on, or we'll agree on a budget together that has bipartisan support…one way or the other it will happen - it will happen by June 30th, cause nobody wants to close the government down, that's a useless exercise."