Gov. Christies, NJ Dems Close to Deal on Public Employee Post Retirement Benefits

Gosh Gov. Christie, Isn’t It Easier When You Work with People.

The WSJ is reporting that New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie is close to reaching an agreement with Democratic Legislative leaders on increasing the contributions that state employees pay toward their post retirement income and health benefits.

N.J. Nears Deal to Cut Pensions, Benefits

The program involves modest increases in funding requirements for the state employees, some loss of benefit provisions and the requirement that newly hired state workers work longer to qualify for benefits.  The deal also works to preserve benefits by requiring the state to actually make its scheduled contributions.

Christie had balanced the budget by just failing to make scheduled payments to the state pension fund, and for reasons beyond the scope of understanding of The Dismal Political Economist this was greeted as great leadership by Conservative Republicans.  Presumably they wanted him to run for President so he could balance the Federal Budget by not making payments to the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds.

Also, it just seems incorrect for Republicans to shower all of this praise on Christie for not making scheduled payments when Democratic Governors in the past had done the same thing, and received no credit at all from Conservative Republicans for stiffing the state retirement accounts.

The Dismal Political Economist never likes to see employee benefits reduced, particularly in an age where compensation for high executives seems to rise forever and is independent of performance, see here, but the reality of the matter is that New Jersey already has high taxes and taxpayers were not going to fund the promised level of benefits anyway.  The Dismal Political Economist is a big fan of reality.