By Joseph Catena
Chris Christie is a lot of things. A twice failed presidential candidate. A turncoat. A Never Trumper. And, as Ralph Kramden once said, “A BLAHHHH BER MOUTH!”
One thing I have never heard him referred as is something I just might be the first person on earth to call him: a socialist.
When Christie, a Republican, served as governor of New Jersey, he famously warred with the teacher’s union. In 2015, “Big Boy,” as former President George W. Bush once called him, told CNN that the national teacher’s union deserved to be “punched in the face.” In New Jersey, Christie sought education reform. Early in his tenure, he had to cut state aid to schools because of a fiscal crisis. He challenged – and eventually won – to make it easier to fire bad teachers. Although he funded the state pension more than his five predecessors, both Republican and Democrat (Jim McGreevey declared a pension holiday throughout his governorship, which shorted the fund by $2.8 billion), Christie did have to skimp on pension payments to balance the budget. His most controversial move however, and why so many public workers – especially teachers, revile him is because he made them pay into their health benefits, which were always free.
Full disclosure: I have been a New Jersey public school teacher for the past 21 years. I lived through the free benefits for a period of time. I voted for Christie twice and would do so again if presented with the horrific left-wing options of Jon Corzine and Barbara Buono respectively. Let it be known that I voted for the far more conservative Steve Lonegan over Christie in the 2009 GOP gubernatorial primary. As a reasonable taxpayer and a man of common sense, I have no gripe with paying into my health benefits. Free was wonderful while it lasted, but not sustainable and not realistic. So how does this make the former governor a socialist?
It’s the way he did it and how we have to pay those benefits.
Republicans are supposed to be the party of low taxes and the free market. We are all about less government. Success of any kind should be rewarded, not penalized. Apparently. Chris Christie doesn’t see this. When his health benefits policy began, it was phased in gradually. For the first four years, public workers were tiered, which is a nice way of saying most of us paid more and took home less four years in a row. Raises were basically negated and overridden.
Here is an elementary view on how it works: for every $10,000 category of your salary, you pay a higher percentage of your healthcare premium. So basically, the more you make, the more you pay. For example, someone making between $70,000 and $79,999 will pay a couple of percent less than someone making between $80,000 and $89,999, and so on and so forth. So, if you are making $79,999, your take home pay will be more than your colleague who just hit the 80k landmark. What was once an attractive perk for teachers has become a financial chokehold. On a personal note, I get paid twice a month. I pay $747.40 for health insurance. Per check! So, at 20 paychecks a year, the math reveals just shy of 15k I pay for a family plan, or 32 percent of my premium because I jumped into a new pay category (compare that to 29 percent from the year before). It’s great coverage, and I am grateful for it, but 32 percent of my premium is a bit overboard, no?
Again, only a socialist would institute such a ludicrous policy. In theory, it comes right out of the Bernie Sanders/AOC playbook. Make more, pay more. Having a little success? You don’t deserve it! You make too much. If everyone across the board paid the same percentage, let’s say 15 percent, you would not hear a peep out of me. At least you would see your raise and not submit it. I would love to know how Governor Christie saw this as a fair policy.
Then again, he has always been a suspicious character and a phony conservative. The late, great Lou Dobbs excoriated Christie when he was a little-known attorney general before becoming governor. (US Attorney Christie’s Resignation Demanded) That’s when Christie addressed a community gathering in New Jersey with a mostly Latino audience and told them, “Being in this country without proper documentation is not a crime…”
Apparently, being a public worker with proper documentation is.