Thread: NJ: Spread blame around for budget problems

Spread blame around for budget problems
9:42 AM, Feb. 27, 2011

Since Gov. Christie has taken office he has told us that the reason for the budget crisis is the teachers and public-sector workers. He has said that that all our budget problems stem from the public pension system and the health care costs.

But I for one have a different view on what caused our budget problems. The first culprit in our budget problems is the politicians. They have constantly robbed Peter to pay Paul to buy votes. Besides their failure to pay into the pension fund they have also diverted funds from other programs.

An example of this is the Unemployment Trust Fund. For the last several years they have diverted money out of the trust fund. Instead of having the money available when the recession hit New Jersey had to borrow money and raise employer taxes in order to keep the fund solvent the and pay benefits.

The Republicans and Democrats would like to blame anyone except themselves for the incompetent way they have they have driven the state's finances to ruin. Maybe they should cut their benefits and reduce their staffs and take their pension and healthcare away from them. But that will never happen; they will keep blaming public workers for the state's budget problems. Too bad there is no intelligence test for politicians or maybe just a course in Economics 101.

The second big cause is illegal immigration. Again to clarify I said illegal immigration. The cost of education, health care and prisons for illegal aliens each year costs the state more than $2 billion a year. That cost per taxpayer is more than $800 a year. This does not take in account the taxes that they don't pay. But again, the governor does not want to talk about it because it is easier to blame the teachers and public employees and their union.

I am not saying the healthcare and pension benefits are not a problem, but let's have an honest discussion about all the cause and just not what is politically expedient.

Thomas KwietniakMILLTOWN

http://www.mycentraljersey.com/article/ ... y=nav|head

"The cost of illegal immigration to the state of New Jersey is $3.5 billion a year, what's they're total budget short fall?"