NJ Could Face Huge Budget Shortfall [AUDIO]

We're only a few days into the New Year, but already, New Jersey is facing a significant budget shortfall.

Later today, Dr. David Rosen, the Finance Officer of the Jersey Office of Legislative Services will update members of the State Senate Budget Committee on Jersey's revenue projections.

State Senate Budget Committee Chairman Paul Sarlo says, "We're at the halfway point of the fiscal year, and state revenue projections have fallen short…We're about 700 plus million dollars short - and that's without taking into consideration the hurricane rebuild and loss of revenues from Sandy…We're a little bit concerned, and we've also known from some other disclosures that they have made to Wall Street for some bond offerings that some of the money they anticipated receiving in the current fiscal year will not come to fruition."

"At the 6 month point, we're concerned that that we have a potential billion dollar revenue shortfall…We need to work the the Governor's administration in a bipartisan manner and begin to make some cuts…We do not want to do what happened in Washington and wait till the last minute - it's important, this is not a political witch-hunt we need to hear from Treasury."

Sarlo adds everyone "needs to get a better handle on this so the Legislature - as a co-equal branch of government - can work with the Governor to bring our budget back into balance- it's our Constitutional obligation…unfortunately we have no choice, nobody wants to make painful cuts but we're going to have to make some painful cuts here - there's no doubt about it, unless somebody could prove to us that the revenues will grow by 11 percent the rest of the year…painful cuts are going to have to be made - and we're going to have to agree upon them -we cannot have our own fiscal cliff here - that's for sure."