It's a lot easier than running around Springfield, dealing with Little Napoleon and confronting a deficit higher than any Trump Tower.
"If New York City and New York State had been contributing to the M.T.A. and New York City Transit as other municipalities and states do in other areas of this country, we would not be confronting a deficit," said Beverly Dolinsky, executive director of the New York City Transit Riders Council.
They confront a giant deficit at the nation's second-largest system, after New York's, an even bigger debt to service, decaying rails and power stations, frustrating union contracts, and Springfield and Washington legislators who don't care if a rider going through a C.T.A. "slow zone" can read his free RedEye tabloid front to back twice.
The administration expects that if its proposal is enacted into law, the next president will confront a $409 billion deficit next year.
Mr. Ferrer continues to advocate sweeping governmental programs dealing with housing and health care, even after learning that the next mayor will have to confront a $4 billion budget deficit.
But as he zipped down a Massachusetts highway on an early February night, he wasn't focused on the issues he campaigned on and the problems he would soon confront: a gargantuan federal deficit; terrorism; health care reform, which his election may well have killed.
He lost a month for orienting himself to an executive branch that he may try to reshape as he confronts a $6.2 billion deficit.
"It was one of the first things to go, and it wasn't that difficult a call," Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for Mr. Christie, said of the governor's decision to halt the credit as he confronted a ballooning deficit.
But after being elected premier in 1992 in the wake of a collapse in oil prices, he confronted a towering deficit and the largest per capita debt of any province.
Revenues have been falling, and the city is confronting a budget deficit of at least $212m in the current fiscal year, which ends in June, and of $484m in the next fiscal year, according to estimates by Wendy Greuel, the city's chief accountant.
