How much would it cost to make Chris Christie a better person?

It takes a lot to frighten Snooki. Via.

About $25 million:

Christie thanked New Jersey residents in his annual budget address for "allowing me the great privilege of running" for president, his first time speaking publicly since dropping out of the Republican race last week.

"It was the governing experience I've had here in this great state, the reforms we tackled here in New Jersey, the bipartisan hard choices we made, and the recovery from one of the largest natural disasters in our nation's history, that I felt prepared me for higher office," Christie said. "While the result was not what I had hoped for, maybe some of you too, the experience has made me a better governor, it's made me a better American, and it's made me a better person."

Graph by Washington Post, February 1 2016.

I'd like to be a better person too, how about it, fans?

Oh, and it also made him a better governor, he said. That's definitely a positive, because New Jersey needs a better governor:

New Jersey is experiencing the eighth slowest job growth of any state in the nation and is one of 13 states that have not recovered all their jobs lost during the Great Recession. The Garden State only recovered 82 percent of the jobs it lost since the state of the recession, having been outpaced by neighboring New York and Pennsylvania — which both regained the lost jobs and then some.

And:

Without intervention, New Jersey’s Transportation Trust Fund will run out of money by June 30, the end of the state's fiscal year. The fund, established in 1984 as a tool for long-term investment in transportation improvements, is leveraged to the point where nearly all dedicated annual revenues must go to debt service. With over a third of the state’s bridges classified as structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, the lack of transportation funding is seen by some as the state’s single most pressing problem.... The real task - raising the tax - will require a heavy lift from legislators during the first half of 2016.

And:

• Faced with an $800 million hole in the FY2014 budget, the Governor decided to cut a scheduled pension payment by $900 million and reduced the FY 2015 pension payment by $1.5 billion, violating the law he signed in 2011 and reneging on his promise to fully fund pensions.

• By blowing up his pension reform, the state is likely to experience future credit downgrades, making it harder to grow the economy. New Jersey has had its bond rating downgraded nine times on Christie’s watch, driving up the interest payments on state debt.

• Every dollar the state skips on necessary pension payments grows over time.
   
• Under the 2011 pension/benefit overhaul, public employees continue to contribute more and more. By 2018, police and fire personnel will be paying 10% of their salaries into the system, state police 9%, teachers and other public employees 7.5%.
   
• Current retirees have had Cost-of-Living Adjustments eliminated.

And:

The governor continues to fight every effort to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, even with 2.8 million residents living in poverty, a 50-year high, according to a 2014 study commissioned by Legal Services of New Jersey. The middle-class continues to shrink under Christie, with the richest 20% controlling half the income.

Shame he couldn't have started off as a better governor, and a better person, huh? This approach doesn't seem cost-effective at all.