well the Murphy Administration is tightening its fiscal belt as the governor prepares to deliver the final budget of his second term recently ordering a pause on pay raises for most state workers stricter limits on new hires and government spending cuts to help bridge a budget Gap that's teetering on $4 billion the administration sees it as another tough choice to be made after inheriting programs underfunded during the Chris Christie era but a senior political correspondent David Cruz reports overspending is also to blame if it feels a little like the morning after an allight Bender prepare for a strong cup of coffee the governor's office is signaling a more sober approach to spending going forward tasking all department heads with finding at least 5% Savings in their budgets for the next fiscal year you hear budget cuts you think service cuts and wonder what happened to the days of billions in federal aid and record-breaking State surpluses Treasurer Liz moyo says there's no need to panic we certainly are in a much better position than we were before the governor took office in terms of a surplus we do have uh resources to fall back on but as we spend more than we take him for Revenue you eat into that Surplus and that's what we're you know we want to address we want to make sure we're still maintaining a decent Sur plus while meeting the needs that New Jersey uh new jerseyans depend on us for but that's easy for her to say Republicans like Senate budget officer Dean O scanland say the structural imbalance spending more than you take in is over $4 billion doll in this budget he says causing that Surplus to shrink right off the top you got two billion of our vaunted uh Surplus we'd spent down by 25% from 8 billion to six billion then we stole the remember that CBT money the uh the corporate business tax the transit fee uh we collected over a billion dollars none of it went to Transit it was used to to balance last year's budget that's three billion right there Then you have again just this is just the easy stuff 600 million it was supposed to be debt to to feasance and avoidance money that was swiped into the general fund you're 3.6 billion Administration and legislative Democrats say Republicans are crying crocodile tears because they stood by while previous governor Republican Chris Christie ignored the school funding formula zeroed out social programs and never made a full pension fund payment it has been painful fiscally to make that payment um this year for instance with the lottery contribution at $7 billion which if prior administrations um including the one that that we took over from had been paying their full pension payment um it would have cost us this year about a little over one billion so that's the penalty payment that this Administration and these legislators have been having to pay Progressive groups like New Jersey policy perspective say budget cutting is not the answer popular programs like the anchor property tax relief and prek funding and more school aid are part of government's mission that said policy perspectives Peter Chen says the answers come from sound fiscal policy and not the half measures all too common to the state budgeting process it's hard because the fixes had to happen two years ago right if uh there you know we had an opportunity to revise the corporate tax to make sure that big businesses that stash their cor their profits overseas had to show those profits when they paid taxes in Jersey that opportunity came and went we revised the the corporate tax without doing it the same goes a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money anchor cost about $2 billion and stay NJ another proposed tax rebate program would cost another billion a year once it's up and running that's another program that Republicans have blasted while at the same time voting yes on lest anyone believe that they can't do the very same things for which they criticize Democrats I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight news