Governor Christie is a big fat lier!

Christie's broken promise on pensions: by Tom Moran

on January 15, 2014 

Gov. Chris Christie caused Democratic heads to explode Tuesday when he suggested that the state should scale back payments into the pension funds.

It was a vague passage near the end of hisspeech, but this much is clear: Christie opened the door to breaking the fundamental promise behind the 2010 pension reform, still his landmark achievement.

The pension funds were in awful shape when Christie swore his oath in 2010, thanks mostly to a string of Democratic and Republican governors failing to make payments required to keep the funds healthy. So Christie and Senate President Steve Sweeney struck a grand bargain: We will reduce benefits to workers, and require both workers and the state to contribute more. We will balance these books.

The public workers did their part. They were required to make full payments immediately, and benefits were cut deeply. The worst of it was that current retirees lost their annual cost-of-living adjustments, in effect a small cut to their promised pensions each year.

Shorting the pension funds would put one of Christie's greatest achievements at risk.

That was rough stuff. But the grand bargain did at least require the state to make larger payments into the funds. Over a seven-year period, Christie promised, the state would ramp up to making its full payments.

Now the bill is coming due. The state is scheduled to invest $2.4 billion in the funds next year, a number that will climb to more than $5 billion by 2018.

That is a staggering amount of money in a budget that is today roughly $32 billion.

So Tuesday, the governor suggested punting on that obligation. It was vague, but his intention was clear. He noted that pension and debt costs will grow by a combined $1 billion next year.

"That's $1 billion we can't spend on education. That we can't invest in infrastructure improvement. That we can't use to put more cops on the street."

The lower payments would be accompanied by lower benefits for public workers. So naturally, their unions are going ballistic. And this time, Democrats say they will not yield. A deal is a deal.

With the din of Bridgegate sucking the oxygen out of everything in Trenton, this didn't get a lot of attention Tuesday. But just wait. This could easily be the biggest political fight of the year.

It's hard to imagine that Christie, in his weakened state, can pressure Democrats to yield on this.

But maybe that's not the point. Christie is probably thinking about 2016 again, and it can't hurt him on the primary trail to pick a fight with public worker union and Democrats. This could all be about scoring political points.

As for the merits of this, it is simply dastardly. The state's pension crisis arose not because workers got excessive benefits. They are in line with other states.

The problem is that Trenton shorted these funds, year after year. Is Christie suggesting we pick up those bad habits again, despite his promises? If so, he will be putting one of his greatest achievements at risk.