Krugman points out how Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) scuttled an important tunnel project that was already in motion under false premises in order to raid the fund to prevent from raising taxes.  This is the conservative vision for America nowadays.  Every day that we allow America’s infrastructure to fall apart…is an expense that we’re passing on to the next generation…and it has real impacts on the economy too.  If we don’t invest in America….it will one day cease to be America.  And what you see popping up around the country is private roads and toll bridges which actually cost taxpayers MORE in the long run.  If you’re too afraid to take the hickey today…it will cost you more tomorrow.  Bank on it.

Paul Krugman writes:

Mr. Christie’s big move — the one that will define his record — was his unilateral decision back in 2010 to cancel work that was already under way on a new rail tunnel linking New Jersey with New York. At the time, Mr. Christie claimed that he was just being fiscally responsible, while critics said that he had canceled the project just so he could raid it for funds.

Now the independent Government Accountability Office has weighed in with a report on the controversy, and it confirms everything the critics were saying.

Much press coverage of the new report focuses, understandably, on the evidence that Mr. Christie made false statements about the tunnel’s financing and cost. The governor asserted that the projected costs were rising sharply; the report tells us that this simply wasn’t true. The governor claimed that New Jersey was being asked to pay for 70 percent of a project that would shower benefits on residents of New York; in fact, the bulk of the financing would have come either from the federal government or from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which collects revenue from residents of both states.

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