Star Ledger Editorial, 7/24/2011
Gov. Chris Christie claims he's stood up for seniors, trumpeting his record last week from the kitchen table of an amiable 84-year old in Perth Amboy.
Time for a reality check. In many ways, seniors were better off before Christie took office. It's gotten only harder for people on fixed incomes to stay in their own homes, thanks to cuts Christie made to property tax relief programs for seniors and people with disabilities.
And if they wind up in nursing homes, they'll find fewer staffers to care for them, due to another $37 million cut made by Christie. The governor points our that he's increased funding for home care services, but that won't help this population.
Balancing the budget requires "shared sacrifice and tough decisions," the administration says. Unfortunately for seniors, a tax on millionaires wasn't one of them.
Christie still insists he's protecting seniors. He says he doubled benefits for the homestead rebate program, but declines to mention he did so after drastically slashing them last year. Christie cut the program from $1.1 billion in 2010 - the last year Gov. Jon Corzine was in office - to $268 million in 2011. He bumped it up to $458 million this year, but seniors are still getting less under Christie. That means a much smaller rebate check in the mail, even after Christie's recent increase.
Then there's the Senior Freeze. Christie claims credit for fully funding this rebate program, but let's not forget that he was the one who froze it last year, and again proposed freezing it this year. It was only thanks to the Democratic Legislature that the program was mostly restored.
Christie makes a similar claim about prescription drug assistance. We're glad he's fully funding these state programs, but again, he did so after initially proposing to raise co-pays on beneficiaries last year.
Taking credit for budget changes he was pressured into is quite different from prioritizing them himself. Seniors were never Christie's budget priority.
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