Years and decades of “tax-and-spend” government have finally caught up with New Jersey. The state faces a $4.5 billion budget deficit, while its Transportation Trust Fund has run out of money and needs a $7 billion injection to stay alive.

Where is all of this money coming from? New Jersey’s credit rating is no longer Triple-A. Interest rates are higher when you continue to borrow money to keep government afloat.

Former Governor James McGreevey spent billions of dollars and increased the state budget by 18 percent in one year of his three-year term. The New Jersey Supreme Court will no longer let the state borrow money to pay for salaries and benefits of government employees.

New Jersey’s fiscal operations, like California’s, are a mind-boggling mess.

The obvious solution is to downsize government by getting rid of waste, fraud and unnecessary bureaucracies that keep expanding, instead of shrinking, during hard economic times.

As long as the state continues to raise taxes and refuses to bite the bullet of fiscal restraint, New Jersey taxpayers will be stuck with more and more taxes every year.

The latest proposals from the new state administration are the local schools and municipalities should not expect any additional state funding this year. Here comes another sharp rise in property taxes. New Jersey already has the highest property taxes per capita and the highest auto insurance in the nation. Meanwhile, the state is digging itself deeper and deeper into debt—debt that will have to be paid back with hefty interest rates by our children and grandchildren.

In preparation for this column on New Jersey’s economy—and future—I spoke with one of the state’s leading economists, Jim Hughes, Dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. I worked closely with Hughes during my 27 years as a leading columnist and investigative reporter at The Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s largest newspaper.

Hughes painted a dark picture of New Jersey’s economy with these words:

“We’ve been losing high-paying jobs and getting low-paying jobs.”

That means less tax revenue for the state.

I look at it as a dangerous “Brain Drain” as the best and the brightest and most educated are leaving the Garden State and moving to greener pastures elsewhere.

New Jersey’s working class is finally getting fed up with politicians creating a financial disaster and then putting the burden on the taxpayer to pay for their fiscal incompetence, rather than making meaningful cuts in state spending.

The Supreme Court had to step in and tell government that it’s mortgaging the state beyond its ability to pay off its massive debt.

Again, the solution is simple: Make New Jersey government operate more like the private sector corporations do in balancing their budgets and paying off their debts.

The bottom line: No more tax-and-spend expansion of government.

If Corporate America can survive economically, so can government. But it takes the courage and will to turn around a massive bureaucracy running out of control.

When I began writing about New Jersey government in 1959 for The North Jersey Herald News, there were only 10 cabinet departments (bureaucracies) in state government. Today, that number has nearly doubled.

I remember when former Governor William Cahill walked into The Star-Ledger editorial office in 1970 and told Editor Mort Pye that he will be known as the first governor to present New Jersey with a one billion dollar budget. Cahill was embarrassed and Pye couldn’t believe it.

Looking back, they were “the good ole days,” compared to today’s more than $28 billion state budget. Imagine if one’s salary could increase 28 times from 1970 to 2006. We’d all be multi-millionaires. The harsh reality is that taxpayers can no longer afford a government that no longer serves the taxpaying voters.

All of us must share some of the blame because most politicians (more than 95 percent) keep getting elected and reelected, with no change in sight. About half of the eligible voters no longer vote. They’ve given up. The 800-pound tax gorilla has won. The taxpayers/voters have lost, again.

More and more “baby boomers” and senior citizens are leaving New Jersey, along with thousands of businesses, small and large, because of oppressive taxation and regulations.

New Jersey is no longer considered a “friendly’ economic environment. More and more New Jersey residents and businesses are moving to friendlier places like our border states of Pennsylvania and Delaware, where taxes, auto insurance, housing and other costs of living are much cheaper.

If those in other states can do it, why can’t New Jersey?