2016 is shaping up as an awfully tough time to be a governor and run for president.

Caught between legal mandates to balance their state budgets and the prospect that raising taxes could derail their national ambitions, several Republican state executives eyeing White House bids are proposing deep budget cuts this month to square their state finances. The moves threaten to damage their standing at home, upset some GOP allies and cause a distraction as they ramp up for presidential campaigns.


Chris Christie tops the list: New Jersey’s financial mess is arguably more damaging to his White House prospects than the bridge traffic scandal that dominated the news most of last year. Up against a Democratic-controlled legislature, he has little room to maneuver. Several lawmakers are insisting on gas tax increases to fund a transportation fund that’s $15.6 billion in debt and due to run out of money in June. Christie has presided over repeated downgrades in New Jersey’s credit rating, and the state pension system is also deep in the red.

On Monday, a New Jersey judge ordered that Christie reverse a $1.57 billion cut he made to the state’s public pension system. The decision, which the Christie administration is expected to appeal, is a victory for the labor unions who sued him and could force the governor to search for other sources of revenue.

But the governor vowed in his state of the state address last month to veto any income tax increases, and in a speech Thursday he went further, suggesting he would oppose tax increases of any kind.

Meanwhile, education advocates say the school system is underfunded and local governments are clamoring to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in state transfers they used to receive.

Christie is expected to propose solutions during his annual budget address on Tuesday. Compounding his difficulty, any proposal inevitably will be viewed through the prism of his looming presidential run.

“We have to grow this economy, not the government,” he told a dinner sponsored by the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. “We will continue to resist a tax system in New Jersey which is unfair to our citizens.”

It’s a similar story for Gov. Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, where falling oil prices have upended state revenue projections. The collapse in oil prices also threatens to tarnish just-departed Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s rationale for a second White House effort. And in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has faced a backlash over his proposal to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from state universities.

At the National Governors Association meeting in Washington this weekend, North Carolina Republican Pat McCrory said he knows what his counterparts are going through as they put the finishing touches on their budget plans.

“You can’t hide as a governor,” he said. “There’s nowhere to hide in a crisis, there’s nowhere to hide during a legislative session, and there’s nowhere to hide regarding just basic leadership skills. You’re in a bubble that’s extremely visible and people are expecting results.

“But that’s why we all love the job,” he added. “You hear congressmen and senators go, ‘I hate it.’ I’ve yet to hear a governor say they hate their job … It’s much more difficult … but you can see the results.”

Jindal is preparing a budget to close a $1.6 billion shortfall in Louisiana, a particularly daunting task after the $400 million in additional money he had to scare up to fill a budget gap for the current year. The president of Louisiana State University said earlier this month that the state’s flagship school is preparing for a 40 percent cut in its operating budget next year.

Fellow Republicans are also taking exception. The GOP speaker of the state House responded by promising to block Jindal from making higher education cuts that he warned “would set us back generations.” Sen. David Vitter, the Republican frontrunner in the race to succeed Jindal, is publicly criticizing what he calls a stopgap approach to plug budget holes.

“I’m running for governor to confront our biggest challenges head-on, not to avoid them or play politics with them,” Vitter said recently. “Gov. Jindal should be doing this now.”

Also on the chopping block: funding for public defenders, the state’s Military Hall of Fame Museum and possibly subsidies for movie studios in the Bayou State.

Jindal, in a recent interview, offered a Christie-like response to the complaints: he’s fine with upsetting people when he feels he’s doing the right thing. “Absolutely we knew we were going to ruffle feathers,” he said.

The governor said he’s proud that he has slashed the state budget by a quarter and the state workforce by nearly a third since taking office. He noted that the state’s economy has grown faster than the national average.

In Wisconsin, meanwhile, Walker’s proposal to close a $1.8 billion shortfall in Wisconsin earlier this month led to major protests on the campuses of state universities, where he’s proposed a $300 million cut in state funding. The Republican had to go into damage control mode after it emerged that his budget bill deleted popular language from the University of Wisconsin’s mission statement. He nixed the proposed change and blamed it on a staff-level miscommunication.

Press coverage of the cuts has been overwhelmingly negative. Two weeks after Walker unveiled the budget, the front pages of both The Washington Post and the New York Times ran critical stories. The same day, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a piece that noted Walker is using budget gimmicks to postpone more than $100 million in debt payments. And another front-page story in the Green Bay Press-Gazette highlighted Walker’s 28 percent cut to the state parks system operating budget.

Asked about the controversial cuts, Walker — who has leaped to the front of the 2016 Republican pack but hit a rough patch the past few weeks — predicted that he will be rewarded for having courage.

“The base of the Republican Party wants leadership,” he said at the NGA meeting. “When it comes to budgets, they don’t want someone who hides behinds a curtain. They want someone who comes out and leads.”

Walker said he inherited a $3.6 billion deficit when he took office in 2011 and has balanced the budget before: “Every year I’ve been in office, we’ve finished with a positive cash balance. We’ll do it again because we’re willing to make tough choices.”

Other states run by likely 2016 candidates are in relatively good financial health. In Ohio, longtime budget hawk Gov. John Kasich is proposing to slash business and personal income taxes while raising sales, tobacco and fracking taxes. And in Indiana, which enjoys a budget surplus, Gov. Mike Pence wants to boost education spending and enact a state balanced budget amendment; Indiana is one of a few states that currently doesn’t have one.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who has just begun his record-setting sixth term, laughed when asked about the cuts that the Republicans courting his support are being forced to make. As bad as it is now, it’s been worse in the past, he said, recalling the farm crisis of three decades ago when he was a young pol.

“Compared to the 1980s,” Branstad said, “this is not a tough time.”