In his March 26^th budget document, the Governor claims that this year’s budget increases spending by a mere 1.5% by stating that FY’02 spending will end up at $23.320 billion and that FY’03 spending will be only $343 million higher at a mere $23.663 billion. This is not true. Included as a line item for "Total Resources" for FY’02 is an item identified as "Lapses". Simply, that is money that is not going to be spent.
At most, only $21.644 billion will be spent for FY’02. Thus the budgeted spending for FY’03 is 9.2% higher than the amount being spent for FY’02.

Furthermore, even if FY’02 is an aberration, the budget for FY’03 proposes to spend more than 11% of the amount budgeted for FY’01, a pace more then DOUBLE the 4.7% inflation increase for the past two years (about 2.3% per year). So my first question to Governor McGreevey is why does the State of New Jersey need to increase spending nearly two-and-a-half times faster than the rest of us? The answer is that it doesn’t. Rather, during these lean years, we must limit the growth in government to inflation.