Meanwhile, some New Jersey lawmakers say the new state budget doesn't do nearly enough to prepare for the cuts coming from Washington.

Republican Budget Officer Declan O'Scanlan has been among the most vocal to that end, criticizing Democrats for hundreds of millions in last minute add-on spending he says could have been used to pad social safety net programs like Medicaid and for the overall size of the budget.

At 58.8 billion, it's the largest in state history, 4% higher than last year's and nearly 60% higher than Governor Murphy's first budget proposal when he got into office.

But O'Scanlan and others are also calling out the process, which they say lacked transparency both for Republicans and taxpayers.

Senator Declan O'Scanlan joins me now as part of our Under the Dome series.

Senator, thanks for coming on the show.

I know you have a lot of concerns with this budget, but what I thought was striking was that on Monday, you proposed legislation to this budget bill that would help account for what we anticipate will be a lot of cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid.

And that was voted down.

It's striking, I think, to see a Republican take a stand on that.

What's your fear here?

Well, look, my fear is the overarching mess that this budget is that the governor won't acknowledge it and the legislative leadership won't acknowledge.

They are still out there with the fantastic contention that we only have a $1.7 billion structural deficit when it's over $4 billion.

That's my biggest fear.

Regarding Medicaid, it's twofold.

We may see some Medicaid cuts.

Now, we won't see anything on the scale that the Democrats are suggesting, certainly not in 2026.

We've already seen Medicaid cuts trimmed down in the federal bill.

So we have to wait and see what the real impact is.

But preparing for that potentiality is just smart and reasonable and responsible budgeting.

Not only did they not accept our amendment to deal with any potential cuts, they've anticipated a 12 percent increase in Medicaid payments in this budget, which we all know ain't going to happen.

So they are talking out of both sides of their mouths.

They're setting us up for a real mess on all of these levels that they can then try to blame on President Trump, which I will be here to remind everyone that that's BS.

It's just not true.

I mean, the governor, Senator Sarlow, others, obviously, you know, were quick to point out that they are making a fifth full payment into the pension system.

They're fully funding- I'm sorry.

The school funding formula.

Yeah, go ahead.

I'm sorry.

I'm interrupting you, but it's really frustrating to me.

They have to make the pension payment.

It's the law.

It was agreed to under Chris Christie.

This administration- Although Christie didn't, but yeah, go on.

No, no, no.

Let me correct you.

Christie, for one blip, followed the ramping up of the payments that we all agreed to.

There was one blip where he didn't because we had a dramatic revenue shortfall.

Other than that, this administration followed, accelerated by a half a year, I think, fully funding the pension system.

But we have to.

It's an obligation.

Nothing to brag about.

It's, oh my God, give us credit because we're not being wildly irresponsible.

Also, by the way, it was easy to make the full pension payment.

We had $22 billion of federal largesse that was injected into our budgeting over the past seven years, six and a half years.

Much of it we didn't need, by the way.

Much of it is federal debt that we'll be paying off, our grandchildren will be paying off for a long time.

But don't brag about these things that were easy or an obligation financially and in the law.

The fully funding the school funding formula, one of the single most irresponsible things for any administration to do.

Fully funding an unsustainable, unfair, outdated school funding formula, slavishly adhering to it and committing the next governor to it is outrageous.

We should have reformed the school funding formula.

And rather than increase our school funding by 50 percent, mostly to a handful of schools, by the way, over half the school districts either got cuts or didn't keep up with inflation.

So again, completely and wildly irresponsible and will be part of what creates the $4 billion structural deficit that we have to face.

And it's going to be a disaster.

And it will be this governor's fault and legislative leadership's fault.

Let me ask you about two of the points that you touched on there, one being the revenue projections.

Are they realistic based on the numbers that you've looked at, based on what OLS has put out, what was prepared for lawmakers?

And what are you concerned about in terms of budget holes that the next governor and you as a lawmaker will need to deal with?

And obviously, I'm thinking about that structural deficit, but also some of these programs like Stay and J and whether or not they're sustainable.

Well, those two things overlap.

So first off, the revenue projections are probably fudged a little bit.

That's not where we're going to have the dramatic problem.

The dramatic problem is the second question.

It's the obligations that we are going to face in this next budget and the next years.

And I don't see an end to it, actually.

And things that we could have solved during this past eight years, had we done any reforms or any restraint, you know, or even half the recommendations that Republicans put on the table, we'd be in much better shape.

But the structural deficit is a dramatic problem.

Stay New Jersey is part of that $4 billion, by the way, which Democrats are committing they're going to pay for.

Republicans would love to do that.

That would be high on our priority list.

I don't think it will be high on Democrats' priority list.

I think next year we'll be here talking about the Democrat legislature wanting to cut Stay and J.

But the structural deficit is a problem.

We have $1.7 billion, which Democrats admit to spending down the surplus.

We've raided the debt to fees fund to the point where there's no money left.

We spent down all the federal money in this last budget, of this governor's budget.

I mentioned Stay New Jersey.

There's a whole, there's another half a billion one shots that won't be there going forward.

So then let me ask you just quickly how you see this positioning the state overall heading into the next year and what looming risks are we not addressing, were not addressed in this budget?

Well, again, we have energy infrastructure.

We have things that we've neglected over this past four years.

School construction funding.

Eventually you're going to have to put more money into school construction funding because it's impossible to do at the local level.

So that is at zero.

You're going to have to face these things.

And that is on top of the $4 billion structural deficit that I've already outlined.

It is, again, this will be known, the Murphy administration will be known as the administration of lost opportunities because it's true.

And because I'm going to be here to tell everyone over and over again about these missed opportunities.

And then we're going to hopefully be working with the Chinerelli administration to try to fix these things.

The problem is it's going to be much harder on the next administration than it would have been on this one.

We missed golden once in a lifetime opportunities that with the breathing room that the federal $22 billion gave us and the school funding formula, because it had not yet been fully implemented, we could have bent the curve on that.

We could have done work with labor to implement health benefits reforms that they themselves want that would lower their premiums.

That's another area.

Our health benefits system is in a death spiral.

People all acknowledge that.

We're looking at more massive increases on public workers' health benefits.

It's a mess.

And right now the governor and legislative leadership are patting themselves on the back.

They are leaving a giant steaming pile of deficit and a ticking time bomb in the lap of the next governor and the next legislature.

Thanks for using the word deficit and not one that we can't air.

Republican Budget Chair Declan O'Scanlan, thanks so much for your time.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

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