Governor Christie: So we cannot tax our way out of this problem. Maybe if we had not raised our taxes 115 times in the 8 years before I got here, maybe there’d be some room to do that, but there’s no room left. So we have to make hard decisions now and we’re working hard with everyone who’s involved in this. Members of the legislature, members of the unions, who I’ve been negotiating with now with for the last 5 months to try to come to a solution to the problem. And the fact is the problem can be solved but everyone’s going to have to sacrifice. And the fact is the taxpayers in this state are already sacrificing and sacrificing plenty. And the extra billion dollars, billion that the taxpayers are sending me this year as governor , every penny of that billion dollars is being put into public sector pensions, public sector healthcare and debt service And remember, a large part of the debt service that we’re paying are for the Whitman-era pension bonds, when they borrowed $2.7 billion to put into the pension and then said by the way, we’re not going to pay anything, principal or interest for 10 years, and then we’ll start paying after that, so, you know, I’m like the guy who showed up for dinner at dessert, and then everybody went to go to the bathroom and never came back and I got the check. That’s fine. That’s the job I ran for and it’s the job I’ve been elected to twice and so I’m not complaining about it, but you need to know the facts.
