(New York – Jim O’Grady, WNYC) If U.S. Senator Charles Schumer was spoiling for a fight when he addressed a business breakfast this morning about regional transportation policy, he got one–from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. That’s because the heart of his forty-minute speech was a scathing critique of Christie’s decision to kill the $9 billion ARC rail tunnel under the Hudson.

“I believe pulling the plug on ARC was a terrible, terrible decision,” Schumer said.

He pointed out that bridge and tunnel crossings between New York and New Jersey are now at capacity as more than a quarter million people commute from and through New Jersey to New York each day, a number that is expected to grow at least 25% in coming decades. He also said the tunnel would have brought thousands of construction jobs to the region and raised property values in large parts of New Jersey. And construction on it had already begun.

“This was not just a project in the planning stages,” Schumer said. “There were explicit funding commitments from the Port Authority and the federal government. It was the largest public works project in the country, coming right here.”

Christie’s spokesman Michael Drewniak did not take that lying down. “Where was the senior senator from New York with funding alternatives to a project that was predicted to run billions over projections – all of which were to be borne by New Jersey and its taxpayers?,” he said in an email. “This was a ‘bi-state’ project for which Senator Schumer’s state and the federal government were set to pay zero, zilch, nothing for the cost overruns. We can live with the criticism while protecting taxpayers from this boondoggle, which was simply a bad deal for New Jersey.”

Drewniak even said he was assuming that Schumer “didn’t brush up on the topic before he spoke. Unless, of course, his remarks are merely political, which is always a possibility.”

Schumer spokesman Mike Morey fired back: “The people who are out of work in New York and New Jersey are not interested in insults, they are interested in jobs. Thousands of people could be put to work today on a project that will create the infrastructure we need to create tens of thousands of jobs in the near future and ease travel for millions of commuters. You don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Morey echoed his boss by adding that Christie made a mistake when he didn’t “work with federal officials to deal with overruns…The Governor’s decision flushed $6 billion in federal and Port Authority money down the tubes.”

Drewniak shot back that the Governor was “very comfortable” with his decision “on behalf of New Jersey and its taxpayers. Senator Schumer embraces deficit spending, we do not. He’s been in Washington a long time.”

Schumer, in his morning speech, also blasted Christie’s proposal to take $1.8 billion of Port Authority money that had been earmarked for ARC and apply it to road projects in New Jersey. The Senator called the move a “cannibalization” of major infrastructure spending meant to bolster the region’s long-term growth–not to mention diverting rail dollars to vehicular projects.

“If we allow the Port Authority to be turned into a rainy day fund, used year to year to fill gaps…it’s the end of the agency as we know it,” he said.

But Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward, who attended Schumer’s morning speech, told reporters afterward that he didn’t view Governor Christie’s $1.8 billion proposal as a threat to his agency’s mission. “I don’t think it’s raiding the Port Authority and I definitely don’t think it’s putting the Port Authority in the position of not being strong going forward,” he said.

When Schumer spoke to reporters next, he reminded them that six of the Port Authority’s twelve commissioners are appointed by the Governor of New Jersey, implying that it wouldn’t be politic of Ward to criticize Christie, even though Christie deserved it.