The familiar smile was gone when Gov. Phil Murphy marched to the podium Monday to declare political war on the legislative leaders of his own party.

This was a new Phil Murphy, one we didn't see during his relentlessly upbeat campaign. On Monday, he acted like a guy who had just been slapped in the face and was not about to put up with it.

"I'm not going to certify a budget based on gimmicks," he said, promising a veto. "When you build a financial house of cards year after year, and see it fall year after year, at some point you have to realize the same old way of doing business in Trenton isn't working."

This week, Murphy faces his first big test. Until now, he's scored mostly easy points on Democratic touchstones, like gun control and Planned Parenthood. Now, it's about money -- and the Legislature is pushing back hard.

If they can't agree, the state government will shut down on July 1, which only raises the stakes on all sides.

The core problem is that the Legislature is refusing the governor's request for a modest bump in the millionaire's tax, and a mini-bump in the sales tax of less than one-half of 1 percent. Instead, they are giving him a magic budget, full of fake spending cuts that they promise will cause no pain for anyone.

How fake is this budget?

The Legislature wants to spend about the same amount as Murphy proposed, according to Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin, D-Middlesex, and Senate President Steve Sweeney D-Gloucester. They just won't impose the taxes needed to cover the cost, even on millionaires.

Voila! Magic!

That math can't work, of course. So, legislators listed hundreds of millions of dollars in savings, mostly based on audits that have yet to be completed. That's sort of like enjoying a fancy dinner based on faith that you will eventually find a way to pay for it.

Murphy, who grew up in the business world, was incredulous. "I can't put that in the bank," he said. "Count me in for audits. But I can't certify that, based on an audit that is yet to be done."

I found myself feeling sorry for the man on Monday. Yes, he's made a ton of rookie mistakes that point to his background in the business world, where a leader can give orders that are obeyed. He's made little effort to show respect to Democratic leaders, to solicit their advice, or to give them half of what they want.

When he was asked to name a single concession he offered to Sweeney and Coughlin during their failed negotiations in recent weeks, he could not do so. Democratic legislators are furious about that, and even the Republican leader, Assemblyman Jon Bramnick, R-Union, couldn't resist piling on.

"He's not negotiating with Democratic leadership, and he's not talking to Republican leadership," he said. "This is not a dictatorship."

But on the substance, Murphy is the adult in the room this time.

Murphy's tax hikes are modest, about one-third as large as Gov. Jim Florio's notorious 1990 hikes, which led to a decade of Republican control in Trenton. And Murphy, again unlike Florio, aimed his taxes mostly at the wealthy, and told us during the campaign that he intended to hike taxes by $1.4 billion, close to the sum he proposed.

Sweeney and Coughlin are not opposing all tax hikes. They would replace the millionaire's tax with a bump in the corporate tax rate, a move that would make New Jersey's top rate the highest in the country. But they would make it temporary, for just two years, as if they want the state to stay in the red forever.

The tougher standoff is on the sales tax, which Murphy relies on to raise just under $600 million. The rate was 7 percent until Gov. Chris Christie cut it by 3/8 of a penny in return for his support of a hike in the gas tax, and now Murphy wants to put it back where it was.

That's right. The nub of this fight is over less than a half penny of sales tax. Democratic legislators are sabotaging the agenda of their own governor, and threatening to shut down government, just to save Christie's meaningless cut in the sales tax of less than one-half a percent.

That is the head-slapper at the center of all this.

The ball now is with the Legislature, which intends to approve its budget by Thursday, even though it won't be introduced until Tuesday. So, we can be pretty sure that most legislators will be blindly following the orders of the bosses.

And, of course, the public will have no chance whatsoever to stand up and challenge the magic budget. That's by design.

"This is another example of small-room decision making," says Gordon MacInnes, a former state senator who runs New Jersey Policy Perspective, a respected liberal think-tank. "They're coming up with a plan and ramming it through the Legislature without time to consider it. This is why we're in a hole."

I suspect these guys will make a deal before the state shuts down. But thanks to the Legislature, it's bound to be a lousy budget that does nothing to dig us out of our hole. Because for better or worse, this is not a dictatorship.

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or call (973) 836-4909. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.