Public Service Pensions Unsustainable Says NJ State Senate President

Public Service Pensions Unsustainable Says NJ State Senate President June 30 2010

Federal stimulus funds used "just like throwing it away".

KCRW public radio program "To the Point"
WED JUN 30, 2010 "Stimulus or Austerity?: That Is the Question"
Host: Warren Olney

Listen to this Los Angeles public radio interview show by Warren Olney June 30, 2010 at
http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/tp/tp100630stimulus_or_austerit

I downloaded it to attached to this email. After seeing it was 23 megabytes, I removed it.

Stephen Sweeney, President, New Jersey State Senate and also an official in New Jersey’s Iron Workers' Union

This guy is great. Sounds like a Democrat who gets it.

It is so hard to believe. His portion is towards the end of the program starting at 37 minutes.

Here's some of Stephen Sweeney's comments, not a great transcript, but pretty close:
• 37 minutes "elected officials bypassed the collective bargaining process, the costs of elections and gave benefits, expanded benefits, that they could not pay for"
• "basically the politicians gave the workers what they asked for and they destroyed the system"
• "our pensions will be bankrupt probably in another five or six years" .. "for political purposes enhancing benefits and to sustain favor with people, in the long run hurting their workers"
• 38.4 "our system we have is not sustainable"
• 38.5 the federal aid to states "plans that I've seen pass out of Washington…used billions of dollars what we did was use the money to plug shortfalls in existing programs instead of dealing with the issues"
• 39.1 "infrastructure improvement, building schools was a better plan, when they turned the money over to the States it was just like throwing it away"
• 42.2 stimulus money should "not to States to fund their budgets, why I said the money was thrown away, state governments and local governments did not have to deal with the financial crises, they pushed it off. If we had taken the money for improving infrastructure, building roads, and schools where you would actually have something for years to come made more sense to me"
• 43.1 "The billions of dollars that we spent in the State of New Jersey basically we were just trying to hide the inevitable"
• "This year we cut $800 million dollars out of school aid; you know, we should have cut a billion dollars last year"
• Question from Warren Olney "And you're an official in the Iron Workers Union? Are you a Democrat as well? Response from Stephen Sweeney "Yes, I am".
• 43.4 "I come from the private sector unions where my employers can go out of business. There's a thought process where because we're government you cannot go out of business. You can always tax more. That model is not working anymore."

The whole program is good including comments by a Harvard professor wanting to slow down federal spending.