S&P downgrades New Jersey's debt rating, criticizing Christie's budgets

Financial analysts at Standard & Poor’s downgraded New Jersey’s debt rating today, flagging Gov. Chris Christie’s budget practices as something that should give pause to investors.

While noting that the state economy has been growing steadily in recent years and has several bright spots that could help in the long run, the Wall Street rating house had tough words for the Republican governor, saying he has a habit of building budgets on rosy economic forecasts.

As a result, tax collections tend to lag by hundreds of millions of dollars every year, punching holes into the state budget and forcing Christie to use stopgap fixes, the analysts aid.