Gov. Chris Christie got it exactly right Tuesday when he told members of his own party in Washington to stop squabbling and send aid to the victims of Hurricane Irene right away. It was a dose of common sense that this discussion sorely needed, delivered right between the eyes.

Christie was responding to the demand from Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House majority leader, that any relief offered to victims of the hurricane be offset by spending cuts in other parts of the budget.

“Nobody was asking about offsetting budget cuts in Joplin (Mo., following a May tornado),” Christie said during a visit to Lincoln Park. “And I don’t want to hear about the fact that offsetting budget cuts have to come first, before New Jersey citizens are taken care of.”

Cantor has been vague about whether he would hold up hurricane aid until a deal is struck. But Christie knows GOP leaders in Washington are not above using hostage tactics to get what they want. When they refused to raise the debt ceiling unless Democrats yielded on spending cuts, they were threatening to wreck the economy if they didn’t get their way.

They were playing a game of chicken, and they won because the White House was convinced they were crazy enough to go all the way.

Christie clearly had that history in mind.

“You want to figure out budget cuts, that’s fine,” he said. “You’re going to turn it into a fiasco like that debt-limit thing, where you’re fighting with each other for eight or nine weeks. And you expect the citizens of my state to wait? They’re not going to wait, and I’m going to fight to make sure that they don’t.”

No, he didn’t name the Republican Party. But remember that Democrats wanted to raise the debt ceiling with no conditions attached, as had always been done before. It was the Republicans who turned it into a big fight. And the governor is right to warn them against a repeat performance.

Keep in mind, too, that New Jersey gets back only slightly more than half of each tax dollar it sends to Washington. By that measure, we are one of the nation’s big losers. So please, Mr. Cantor, give us the cash and spare us the squabbling.