Did Josh Gottheimer take credit for something Mikie Sherrill did?

By Rubashov

If InsiderNJ’s Fred Snowflack was more journalist and less partisan cheerleader, perhaps people would help him get to the meat of a story. Yesterday, Fred covered an event – put together by Congressman Josh Gottheimer’s district office – that was, for all intents and purposes, a political event.
 
On public property, Congressman Gottheimer announced that he had “clawed back” a half million dollars in federal money in the form of five new buses for Sussex County’s Office of Transit. We will let Fred take over the story from here:
 
He convened a press conference just off the Newton Green to announce a $500,000 federal grant to Sussex County to buy five, new buses to benefit seniors, the disabled and veterans. The new buses will either supplement or replace the county’s current 25-vehicle fleet, which is said to be aging.
 
As one of the more rural regions in New Jersey, public transportation in Sussex is severely lacking. So for many, the bus program run by the county is the “only game in town.”
 
…All House members enjoy “bringing home the bacon.”
 
Gottheimer, however, wants people to know that he considers it more than that.
 
He likes to use the term “clawing money back” from the “moocher states.”
 
The central argument here is not new.
 
For years, New Jersey residents have sent more tax money to the feds than the state gets back in aid. There are many states – the moocher states to Gottheimer – that get more money back from Washington than their residents pay in taxes.
 
This is more complicated than it seems. One reason for the imbalance is that income levels in New Jersey are among the highest in the nation, so it is logical that state residents pay more per capita in taxes. And as a wealthy state, New Jersey on average does not get as much federal aid as a poorer state would.
 
Nonetheless, Gottheimer says New Jersey deserves to get more federal money.
 
There are two curious aspects to Gottheimer’s argument:
 
First, his party – the Democrat Party – controls both houses of Congress and the White House, so exactly who is responsible for a state of affairs in which so-called “moocher states” are permitted to “mooch”? It would seem that his party, the party in power, is responsible. So, why vote for it (given Gottheimer’s argument)?
 
Second, if the “moocher-moochee” argument holds for national politics, then it must hold as well for state politics. New Jersey has the most inequitable formula for funding public education in America. It is one in which urban “moocher” districts get most of the revenue from the state income tax, while the majority of school districts – like all of them in Sussex County – get “mooched on” (in Congressman Gottheimer’s parlance). And it doesn’t matter that rich towns like Hoboken and Jersey City are among the moochers or that half the state’s economically disadvantaged school children live in places being mooched upon – this corrupt system is the established will of the folks who run New Jersey.
 
And which party controls the Legislature and the Governor’s office in New Jersey? Which party allows this “mooching” to go on? Why, it is the Democrat Party, of course. So, why vote for it (given Gottheimer’s argument)?
 
Now for the curious situation of just who got the money for the buses in Sussex County?
 
We may never know, because under the administration of former County Moe-Moe Greg Poff, record keeping was notoriously sloppy. Documentation for a grant worth hundreds of thousands of dollars simply goes missing. A document regarding a transaction worth millions disappears (as anyone who follows the valiant whistleblowing efforts of Byram Councilman Harvey Roseff knows).

But what we do have is a public document suggesting that Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill handled this grant, not Congressman Josh Gottheimer. As the Congresswoman no longer represents Sussex County, perhaps she passed off her work to one of her two Democrat colleagues – although it appears that Congressman Malinowski could use the points more than Congressman Gottheimer. It seems politicians are not a very altruistic lot when it comes to taking credit.

In any case, whoever did it, kudos to you.

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell

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