Budget Preview: Christie, Sweeney Pension Clash

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

Governor Chris Christie's FY 2013 Budget Address
Governor Chris Christie’s FY 2013 Budget Address

Let the games begin: Governor Chris Christie will propose a budget on Tuesday afternoon with a smaller pension payment than Senate President Steve Sweeney said he’s willing to accept to avoid a government shutdown, Save Jerseyans, 

According to pre-released excerpts, the Governor’s FY 2015 budget proposal includes a $2.25 billion payment towards New Jersey’s chronically underfunded pension system, a payment which Christie plans to point out “is nearly the equivalent of the total payments made in the ten years before we arrived by five different governors.”

Senate President Steve “Sandy Hook is Fair Game” Sweeney has been in full grandstanding mode in recent days, ruling out tax cuts completely while his Assembly counterpart pitches new taxes (thanks for nothing, Steve!) and threatening to shutter state government (ironic much?) if Governor Christie refuses to raise the state’s pension contribution from $1.7 billion in the FY 2014 budget to $2.4 billion pursuant to the politicians’ 3-year-old pension overhaul agreement; whether the $150 million difference is a deal-breaker remains to be seen.

“That’s not what I said,” the indignant and more-than-a-little-perturbed Governor countered during February’s edition of 101.5’s Ask the Governor program. “That’s the way it’s been characterized afterwards. What I said was that we’re not going to be able to fund other programs that we all want if we don’t address the exploding costs of pension payments and debt service in our state, and so what I said was that I want to open a conversation about how to deal with that. I never said I wasn’t going to make the payment.”

Humanizing the pension plight is a big part of Tuesday afternoon’s “Attitude of Choice” theme. Christie intends to reaffirm his commitment to tackling the severity of the looming pension crisis by framing it terms of what inaction is costing taxpayers in taxes and services. “Due to our pension, health benefit and debt obligations,” one budget address excerpt reads, “only 6 percent of new spending can be focused on the areas where we really want to dedicate our resources – education, tax relief, public safety, higher education, drug rehabilitation, health care and critical services for the most in need.”

The Governor’s call for action will also center on the need to build upon past successes. “Though the historic 2011 reforms we enacted together immediately reduced New Jersey’s state and local unfunded pension liabilities by 32 percent, it just doesn’t go far enough”; “[w]ithout additional reforms, New Jersey taxpayers still owe $52 billion to fully fund the pension system.”

Senator Sweeney’s refusal to entertain a Democrat tax cut compromise will elicit a direct response from the Governor, acknowledging that “there will be some that would advocate that the answer is to raise taxes,” but expressing his believe that “[n]ot only is this an unfair solution, it isn’t a solution at all. We just can’t raise taxes enough to pay for the exploding costs of public employee pensions and benefits. Not to mention the burden it would place on our already overburdened taxpayers.”

Political considerations aside, it’s not immediately clear exactly how large the new Christie budget will be overall since his only clue was that it’s $2.2 billion less than the 2008 Corzine offering after health care, pension and debt service payments are deducted. Christie’s first budget for FY 2011 was $28.4 billion, followed up by $29.6 in FY 2012, $32.1 billion for FY 2013, and $32.9 billion for FY 2014.

And don’t forget about 2016, folks. It’s omnipresent with or without the G.W. Bridge specter. Governor Christie plans to cap off his address with an eye on the national scene.

“Across the country, we are sacrificing university research, support for K-12 education, funding for the environment and energy and infrastructure of all kinds on the altar of these three things: pensions, health costs and debt,” reads the transcript. “Due to these exploding entitlement costs, we are failing our taxpayers when we refuse to honestly address these problems and try to fool them into believing that choices do not need to be made. We are better than that. New Jersey is clearly better than that.”

Tomorrow is tomorrow but, today, bipartisanship is a over in Trenton.

Game, set, go…

Matt Rooney
About Matt Rooney 8405 Articles
MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.