Sweeney says Christie's pension plan is a presidential audition, 'zero' chance of N.J. Legislature passing it

By Matt Friedman | The Star-Ledger
on July 28, 2014

NEWARK — State Senate President Stephen Sweeney said Gov. Chris Christie's push for new pension cutbacks is part of his strategy to run for president in 2016.

“The end game is to make himself the darling of the national political scene again,” Sweeney said at a Star-Ledger editorial board meeting today.

Sweeney (D-Gloucester) also said there is “zero” chance that legislative Democrats will make a deal with Christie to further cut back pensions for public workers, which they did three years ago.

“He broke his word. He didn’t make the payment,” Sweeney said. “So why would I do anything if he’s not keeping his word?”

Sweeney worked with Christie in 2011 to make cuts to public workers’ pension and health benefits. As part of the deal, the state was required to gradually increase its payments into the system after years of shorting it.

But faced with huge budget shortfalls after years of over-estimating state revenue, Christie filled the holes by skipping more than $2 billion in payments through June of 2015.

Christie has begun touring the state to gin up support for his plan, even though he has not announced exactly what he wants to do . Christie has said he hopes to have the plan in place by the end of the summer , and has has suggested it would involve moving new public workers into a 401k-type system instead of pensions.

Sweeney’s sponsorship of the 2011 cutbacks to public pensions and benefits strained his already-tense relationship with public workers’ unions. But Sweeney said he could at least tell them at the time that the government was kicking up its contributions.

“The labor people were not on my side when I did the previous reforms, but my comments were ‘I have the payment guaranteed.’ Now you know what I have? I have nothing,” Sweeney said. “So how do I go back to people in good faith and say ‘trust me this time… I’m going to double-pinky swear it will work this time?’”

But just as Christie is considered a likely candidate for president in 2016, Sweeney is expected to run for governor in 2017 – or earlier, if Christie leaves office before his term is up to pursue the presidency.

Sweeney denied that his resistance to pension changes has anything to do with his own ambitions.

“This has nothing to do with running for any other office,” Sweeney said. “This has to do with keeping the commitment.”

Sweeney said he has “no idea” whether Christie will leave office early, but that he personally thinks Christie will leave before the next budget has to be passed in June 2015. Sweeney said he can’t imagine Christie would want to deal with the un-funded Transportation Trust Fund.

“That’s my guestimate. Everyone has a guess,” Sweeney said. “For me, I don’t know how he does another budget because he has to deal with the Transportaiton Trust Fund, and has to provide a solution to it. And the pensions. So you have a big number of major issues coming at you. And they’re not going away.”