NJ Senators: Forget Christie, We Insist on Wasting Billions on Rail Project

New Jersey's two U.S. Senators, the limosine liberal octogenarian Frank Lautenberg and loathesome machine hack Bob Menendez, are attempting to make Chris Christie look bad with a new plan to build a rail tunnel underneath the Hudson River to replace the project that Governor Chris Christie cancelled due to skyrocketing costs. On the surface it may seem like a shrewd political gamble, but that is if you look at politics today through the prism of the politics of the last several decades. The days of politics as a pork-barrelling pissing contest are over but Lautenberg/Menendex seem to think that they can trump the Governor by ballyhooing that they brought home this elephantine project whereas Christie could not. First, the project is just a plan and is miles away from approval, funding and years away in terms of reality, so the Senators are bringing an imaginary weapon to this fight. Second, the essential difference seems to be that they've gotten the federal government to foot the bill, which a) was what Christie said could make the project go forward, b) will raise the ire of federal taxpayers and lawmakers who are not from New Jersey (the nation needs a new Big Dig to rail against), and c) Christie could counter with a claim to victory, "See, I called the Feds bluff and now they are paying for this" he could say. All in all, if this was an attempt to one-up the Governor, it's pretty weak. Or maybe it's not, maybe it is an attempt to spend yet more billions to bring some form of relevancy to the Frank Lautenberg Seacaucus Junction which is the biggest useless, pork-barrel eysore of a rail station you have ever seen. I travel through the Secaucus station fairly often and I never see more than twenty people on the platforms, which stands to reason because there is no reason to go to Seacaucus and nobody really lives in Seacaucus, it's a warehouse hub served by trucks.