Promises...

...are important.

"With all 80 state Assembly seats on the ballot, New Jersey’s Democrats – helped considerably by $4 million the NJEA spent on behalf of their campaigns – added four seats to the majority they already had in the lower house.

"The NJEA was all in for the Democrats this year. For the first time in recent memory, the union did not endorse a single Republican. But the union also insisted that it wasn’t party affiliation that mattered. “We would have liked to endorse a Republican,” said Ginger Gold Schnitzer, the NJEA’s head of government relations and director of the NJEA’s PAC.

“The reason the Republicans weren’t endorsed was that none of them stood up and voted for the five-seventh pension payment,” she said, referring to the proposed $3.1 billion payment of five-seventh of the state’s obligation. “The rubber met the road on the pension payment. This election for the NJEA was very much about one thing: It was about candidates keeping promises.” 

-John Mooney, NJSpotlight.com, November 6, 2015.

Beginning with the administration of Christie Whitman and in every administration since, NJ has used the assets of the retirement systems to fund gaps in the state budget.

  

Bravo to all of those teachers and support staff who work for the taxpayers of NJ for helping to elect legislators who believe that keeping a promise is important. 

Note: Ronald Reagan was the first President to "borrow" the assets of the Social Security Trust Fund to fund gaps in the US budget. Every President since, has done the same.