Christie Cuts N.J. Pension Payments to Close Budget Gaps
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said he’ll reverse course on promised pension contributions this year and next, cutting back to balance the budget after revenue fell short of his goals by as much as $875 million.
This year’s payment of $696 million will be less than half the planned $1.58 billion, Christie told reporters in Trenton. For fiscal 2015, the payment will be $681 million, less than one-third of the record $2.25 billion he had proposed.
New Jersey faces a cash shortage next month, with $2.6 billion due on tax- and revenue-anticipation notes, or TRANs, and just $2.2 billion on hand. The 51-year-old Republican, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, has refused to raise taxes to remedy three straight years of missed revenue.
“This is a political decision -- it’s all about 2016,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch, said by telephone. “Now that he’s not the odds-on favorite of the moderate wing of the Republican Party, he’s got to win conservative voters. He’s got to do everything in his power not to raise taxes.”
Continued at Link:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-20/christie-to-reduce-new-jersey-pension-payment-this-year-and-next.html
For those who are unaware Christie already negotiated a cut in pensions in exchange for, among other things, this payment. Now he is refusing to look elsewhere to come up with the payment he promised in exchange for pension cuts. Also, Christie has ignored his state budget director for the last couple of years. The state budget experts came up with an estimate on revenue, Christie thought the revenue would be higher and of course he was wrong. He upped the estimate, passed a budget based on that estimate and then when revenue fell short (usually right where the budget experts said) he went after pensions. Pay attention to this, I believe it's the new GOP union-busting tactic.
= new reply since forum marked as read
For the benefit of billionaires across America who will back anyone who steals from the worker to give to the rich, to bankroll a presidential run!
People who bypassed raises when they were young and fit (to get a better pensions later) have been cheated TWICE.
They may have had to do without when they were young & healthy, and now that they can no longer work, they are stripped of money they counted on.
As someone who is retired (and husband retires in 2 months) I can tell you that we count on EVERY penny, and since you are flying blind into old ages, you just never know what;s ahead. 
We have devolved into a mean-spirited nation that regularly steals from the poorer to fatten up the wealthy..
