Is the NJ pension crisis Christie's Waterloo?
It's the 15th of the month, and once again, along with thousands of other public employees across the state, I made my legally-required pension payment. How about you, Gov. Christie? No? I didn't think so.
If you live in NJ, you'd have to be living under a rock to not know about the pension battle raging in Trenton. And if you're reading this, you also know that this debacle is decades old with Democratic and Republican governors being equal opportunity offenders as one after another raided the once-flush fund to plug budget holes and prop up their pet projects. (Bonus points for alliteration!)
So, what can public employees do to fix this mess? Nothing. We didn't cause it and we can't cure it. The only thing we can and should do is demand nothing less than full funding of the pension system as required by the law Gov. Christie touts as his signature, bipartisan 'reform'. Because while he was busy cutting deals with certain Democrats to 'fix' this fiasco (translation: public employees work more, pay more and get less in return while the super wealthy and corporations get tax breaks) he was also doing this—with the blessings of the NJ Democratic Party Machine and GOP legislators who have been too afraid to stand up to him:If you live in NJ, you'd have to be living under a rock to not know about the pension battle raging in Trenton. And if you're reading this, you also know that this debacle is decades old with Democratic and Republican governors being equal opportunity offenders as one after another raided the once-flush fund to plug budget holes and prop up their pet projects. (Bonus points for alliteration!)
The state can afford to fix this crisis; it all comes down to priorities. If Christie can afford to give tax breaks to the super wealthy and corporations—which, by the way, has done little to spur the state's economy—he can afford to make his legally-obligated pension payments. If he doesn't, this will happen in 12 years:
It's really that simple, folks.
But that would mean helping public employees, and if there's one thing Gov. Christie hates, it's public employees. So he keeps beating the same dead horse, continuing to excoriate us, oddly fighting his signature legislation in court, while his poll numbers point to a populace that has grown weary of the blustering, the bullying and the flat-out lies. He's acting less like a confident presidential candidate and more like one who has to play Marie Corfield: Is the NJ pension crisis Christie's Waterloo?:
