By Matt Rooney
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Did you hear this, Save Jerseyans? Governor Phil Murphy thinks it’s “utterly irresponsible” for Mitch McConnell to say he’s discinclined to sign off on a direct aid bailout of pension-saddled states.
Give us a break, Phil. We weren’t born yesterday. What’s truly “utterly irresponsible” are New Jersey’s long-standing fiscal practices which, over time, have transformed the once economically vibrant Garden State a “sick man” among her sister states.
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Some quick history:
Even before the current COVID-19 crisis, New Jersey’s unfunded liabilities topped $130.7 billion; each New Jersey resident inherits $14,000 in debt just for the privilege of living here. Check out our history of Trenton’s pension “death spiral” (click here) for more background. It suffices to say that Trenton taxed and borrowed – through bonds and light pension payments – instead of trimming fat. The end result is a cresting fiscal calamity which has been building, slowly and ominously, over the course of three decades. There’s a reason why our credit rating keeps getting downgraded (and just was again on Tuesday for the 12th time in a decade).
We’ve already got the worst overall tax burden in the country, and our state constitution prohibits borrowing to balance a state budget. He isn’t willing to cut #woke priorities like the millions taxpayers spend on illegal immigrant legal fees and Planned Parenthood subsidies.
Sooo Murphy is now begging for a huge federal bailout to… fund expanded testing?
More hospital beds?
Hazard pay for first responders?
Supplemental unemployment payments?
PPE supplies?
Nope. To stave off public sector union layoffs which should’ve happened years ago but didn’t, hence the current exacerbated fiscal crisis. It’s a joke, folks! A very unfunny one at a time when over 700,000 New Jersey private sector workers are newly on the unemployment line.
Cocaine Mitch is no dummy. He gets it.
“You raised yourself the important issue of what states have done, many of them have done to themselves with their pension programs,” McConn told Hugh Hewitt during the interview at issue. “There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations.”
A-men. Trenton would spend the money on a bigger shovel to dig an even bigger hole, and a handful of Trenton legislators get it. “The federal government would be a lot more inclined to help us out if we made substantial reforms first,” said Assemblyman Ned Thomson (R-Monmouth) in response to the controversy.. “We can’t afford to wait and miss this opportunity.”
Let something good come of coronavirus.
Senator McConnell needs to hold firm here. Yes, help small businesses and taxpayers directly (Democrats on the Hill have held up additional paycheck protection funds, by the way), but let Trenton’s fiscal insanity expire. Subsidizing it serves no rational purpose inside or outside of a pandemic. It’s one disease for which there IS a cure, and Mitch McConnell may be the doctor we’ve been waiting for.
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Save Jersey’s Founder and Blogger-in-Chief, MATT ROONEY is a nationally-noted and respected New Jersey political commentator. When he’s not on-line, radio or television advocating for conservative reform and challenging N.J. power-brokers, Matt is a practicing attorney at the law firm of DeMichele & DeMichele in Haddon Heights (Camden County).
