On Tuesday a gloomy Chris Christie donned a hair shirt instead of a fleece jacket and proffered his 2015 fiscal-year budget sermon to Statehouse legislators. Total state spending will come to $34.4 billion, which includes a $2.25 billion state-mandated payment towards New Jersey’s “exploding” retirement fund for public workers in order to atone for the “past sins” from “governors and legislators who paid little or nothing into the system.” We worship on “the altar of these three things: pensions, health, and debt,” Father Christie intoned hoarsely (he had a cold) and we must reform our pension system or we’ll end up in the fiscal hell of Detroit. Then he quoted Mahatma Gandhi.
We hardly recognize the man, diminished in girth and bluster, preaching penance. But at least school funding is intact.
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