Tue Jun 29, 2010 at 02:00:00 PM EDT
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While the Governor has used public worker pensions as a club to beat them into submission, all of his talk has lead to making a bad problem even worse when you look at the numbers:The budget skips a $3 billion pension payment, which means the state pensions system, already underfunded by $46 billion, will fall further in the red. Christie and his administration have promised to propose bold pension reforms, setting up a potentially large battle later this year. So he's making a very bad problem even worse, in order to solve it at a later date. The fact is, that $46 million figure could seem conservative according to the latest news:A new report from George Mason University says it's closer than you think.
The university's Mercatus Center studied public employee systems across the country and used New Jersey's as an example of how bad things can be.
"New Jersey's defined pension systems are underfunded by more than $170 billion, an amount equivalent to 44 percent of gross state product and 328 percent of the state's explicit government debt," said authors Eileen Norcross and Andrew Biggs. The reason we have this problem in the first place is because Legislators and Governors from both sides of the aisle played the exact same game Christie is. They talked tough and then when the public wasn't looking, failed to fund their obligations. Of course, those same legislators and governors are also collecting pension benefits from the system they vilify. And now those Legislators and the Governor want to scapegoat the people who were promised benefits because they didn't live up to their end of the bargain, while failing to do so once again. Typical. |
| Jason Springer :: Christie's budget makes a very bad pension fund problem even worse |
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