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The Spectacle Blog
The videos of New Jersey governor Chris Christie engaging in pro-market rhetoric keep drawing attention. Here’s the most recent popular one, which has over half a million views on YouTube:
After his first major legislative accomplishment, passing a balanced budget that closed a $10.7 billion revenue gap, there were two agenda items that Christie needed to fulfill to back up his rhetoric. The first was the 2 percent property tax cap that he signed in July. As Josh Barro has argued, a similar cap allowed Massachusetts to place itself on a far more sustainable fiscal path without sacrificing public service quality.
Perhaps even more important than the cap, though, was an overhaul of the state’s public pensions. Notably, Christie was only able to sign a balanced budget by skipping $3 billion in state pension contributions. That move only contributed to the more than $180 billion in unfunded pension liabilities the state is now facing, according to Christie.
So it was crucial that Christie follow up with a legitimate plan to resolve the pensions crisis. Last week he announced his plan. APP.com has a summary of the plan here. Basically, the plan would roll back an extravagant pension benefit enhancement, freeze cost of living adjustments, and require state workers to contribute more to their health care premiums, and increase the retirement age.
The Wall Street Journal gives Christie’s plan high marks in an editorial this morning, claiming that “the Christie plan would eliminate a major chunk of the state’s unfunded liabilities, and for that he deserves kudos.” And the Mercatus Center’s Eileen Norcross calls the plan “significant and bold.”
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More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/09/20/another-look-at-reform-in-new
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Julie| 9.20.10 @ 11:44AM
Governor Christie needs to come up with a diet plan and lose weight. He's too fat.
Oldefarte| 9.20.10 @ 1:17PM
Who gives a rat's ___ about his weight, as the liabilities from same will only effect him personally. What's important is that this man is the personification of the politician that we need to be sitting at the desk inside 1600's oval office, along with inside each and every governor's mansion in this country. It's absolutely amazing to me that a politician has as much GUTS as he does [as seen by the numerous death threats that have been so far made against him for his budget cutting policies]. If there is one politician essentially NEEDED by this country, it has to be Christie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
David W| 9.20.10 @ 1:43PM
Maybe the concern about the weight is to be sure he is/remains healthy so that once he is finished saving New Jersey he will be able to save the country from the crap the Obamaites are thrusting on us.
Julie| 9.20.10 @ 2:10PM
He's got a GUT all right. Mitt Romney is physically fit and has the edge over Governor Christie not on the scales of course. TILT!
Bob| 9.20.10 @ 2:18PM
I wonder what Governor Crisco weighs? American Spectator should start a guess the governor's weight contest. First prize an all expenses paid trip to Camden.
Stacie | 9.20.10 @ 4:53PM
Here is what the people of NJ do not seem to understand. The state of NJ could never afford to fund the current pension system. This is not just because the market fell or because the state did not fund it this year, it was broken from the start. It was based on some really bad math and a ton of lies. They borrowed money to make payments into the pension system with absolutely no viable plan to pay it back.
The SEC indited the State of NJ for fraud, our politicians were cooking the books to create billions of dollars of assets that didn’t exist. They transferred money between 2 accounts so it would look like they were paying off debt and funding the pensions. In actuality the state has not funded the state pension plans since 1997.
It completely astounds me that our legislator is holding hearings about a clerical error in a 1200 page application but no one cares that we repeatability violated federal securities laws. The same people that are outraged about one piece of paper will not even acknowledge the fact the state has been committing fraud on their watch.
I find it very ironic that Steven Sweeney is demanding that Governor Christie makes this years payment to the pension plans. He has been in the state senate since 2002 and therefore has been a part of the administration that has effectively shuffled money around in order to hide the fact that they were not funding the pensions.
The teachers, fireman and policemen do not seem to understand this has nothing to with them. This is not about the job they do. The state of NJ signed contracts with the unions that they had no possible way of honoring.
Read More:
http://www.sec.gov/litigation/.....3-9135.pdf
Stacie
Tough Love| 9.20.10 @ 8:07PM
"Stacie" hit the nail on the head, but for those you you (the Civil Servants) too thickheaded to understand, I'll offer this ...
At EVERY pay level (from the $25K worker to the $300K executive), the value of the employer (meaning TAXPAYER ) paid-for share of the “typical” Civil Servants’ retirement package (pension & retiree healthcare) is 2-4 times greater in value than that of the employer paid-for share of a comparably paid Private Sector worker retiring at the SAME age and with the SAME years of service …. and that 2-4 times rises to 4-6 times for “safety workers”.
You can try to spin this any way you like, but it will still be unaffordably expensive, unsustainable, and grossly unfair to taxpayers whose contributions (together with the interest earned thereon) pay for 80-90% of these pensions & benefits.
What makes you think this is "fair" ?