Republicans offered their take on the speech criticizing spending levels under the Murphy administration.

Senior political correspondent David Cruz is with Republican Senate leader Anthony Bucco with the GOP response.

David?

That's right, Briana.

You know, the speech started late and ran a little long.

Obviously, the Republicans are having their own response separately.

We got an opportunity to speak to Minority leader, Senate Minority Leader Anthony Bucco.

Here's what he had to say.

Just an initial reaction.

Well, look, the governor was very optimistic tonight.

He talked about affordability, access to health care, crime, education.

Those are all great things.

And I think we all feel the same way that we need we need help in those areas.

But your actions got to match your words.

Right.

You can't have a budget that spends $1,000,000,000 more and expect New Jersey to be affordable to our residents.

And we see that in terms of our migration.

We have a we have a learning loss in our schools as a result of the pandemic restrictions that were imposed.

All of these things will take action and we'll see what the governor proposes as we move forward.

But all of those things, you say they take action, they also take money.

And so there's going to be need to be expenditures for those things.

Well, look, I think the state last year had an awful lot of money to spend and unfortunately, we squandered it and now we're facing a fiscal cliff.

So, you know, these are the type of things that when you talk about these big ideas and these big policy decisions that you bought, it got to be able to back them up.

Sometimes it's going to take little things and little steps to get there.

But the deep the devil will be in the details.

The governor came out this afternoon in support of an affordable housing reform bill that almost made it through the Senate, but stopped you and other Republicans and other Democrats, quite frankly, expressed some reservations about it.

Where are you on that right now?

Well, look, the bill that's presently before it, that was in the last session, I don't think addressed the concerns that many municipalities faced.

The governor spoke about sound planning today.

That's got to be a three component of anything that we do moving forward, because you can't just jam these houses into municipalities where there isn't places for folks to work.

Mass transportation and infrastructure to support it.

It just doesn't work.

And we can't keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

So they're going to be these special masters in this bill who will talk about what the requirements are for affordable housing in the three regions of the state.

Does that help to to make that a little easier for everybody to understand and manage?

I'm not so sure the devil will be in the details for that.

I think we have to give the municipalities a little bit more flexibility to be able to locate the affordable housing in spots that can support it.

And that's what's most important because if you have spots that can support the affordable housing, it will get built.

So we talked with Senate Budget Committee Chairman Paul Sarlo the other day, and he said that he is expecting that this year's budget process is going to be particularly tough.

He says that there are a couple of tough spots out there.

Do you agree with him and what are those tough spots?

I do.

We see revenues falling far behind projections.

So, you know, and Republicans have been saying this year after year when times were good, that those were the times to make structural changes.

When all of a sudden the bottom falls out, you're forced to cut in areas that you may not want to have to cut.

So when times are good, that's the time to make those structural changes.

Unfortunately, I think we missed the boat on that on that opportunity.

So Senate Minority Leader Anthony Bucco there reacting to the governor's speech.

Not much of a surprise there, what he had to say.

But in terms of what the dynamic is going to be going forward with this legislature, that's going to be an interesting thing to watch.

Will send it back to the studio right now.

I'm David Cruz in Trenton.