Politics & Power Quote by Chris Christie

“Higher taxes is the road to ruin” isn’t an argument so much as a mood: a blunt, preemptive alarm meant to make any tax increase feel not merely mistaken but catastrophic. Christie’s grammar slip (“taxes is”) almost helps the line land; it reads like barroom plainspokenness, the kind of rough authenticity that signals he’s not here to workshop nuance. The phrase “road to ruin” borrows the moral clarity of a cautionary tale, turning fiscal policy into a cliff-edge narrative where there’s only one safe direction: cut.

Then comes the pivot from diagnosis to discipline. “We must and we will” is political chest-thumping, a promise of command in a system built on bargaining. It’s also a hedge: repetition performs certainty when the underlying task - shrinking government without hurting popular services - is politically radioactive. “Shrink our government” sounds surgical and technocratic, but it’s a euphemism that lets voters imagine waste evaporating instead of programs being eliminated.

The real subtext lives in “tough choices” and “tightening our belts.” Those phrases distribute responsibility downward and outward. The pain is framed as collective and inevitable, like weather, rather than the result of prioritizing some constituencies over others. In the post-recession, deficit-obsessed era that shaped Christie’s brand, austerity language doubled as identity politics: serious adults versus big-spending fantasists. It’s designed to make cutting feel virtuous and taxing feel decadent - a moral economy, not a budget.