Debunking the NJEA’s Murphy Endorsement
New Jersey’s teacher’s union wants you to vote for Murphy and their agenda
IF THERE IS A lesson voters should take with them to the ballot box when they vote in New Jersey’s gubernatorial election on Tuesday, it’s this: If the New Jersey Educational Association endorses a candidate, you should probably vote for the other guy.
It is never a surprise when a public workers’ union comes out in support of a Democrat. However, what is eye-opening is the level of dishonesty the NJEA is willing to put forward to help a politician that they picketed against only a few years ago.
Their agitprop takes the form of a “candidate comparison” website created by the union that attempts to demonstrate why incumbent Governor Phil Murphy is the “pro-education” candidate.
First and foremost, the NJEA puts its main concern right up front: pensions. The NJEA’s ranting about generous retirement benefits that are funded by the very parents they despise and is allocated to them by the politicians they pay handsomely to elect serves only to rile up the base and mobilize their members.
But it is those same benefits that have driven New Jersey’s property taxes to their highest-in-the-nation mantle. And, despite, as the NJEA points out, Murphy making “the state’s first full pension in more than 25 years,” the problem has only continued to worsen.
This is occurring irrespective of Murphy’s cash dumps to the unions because the pension fund is only ever financed around 50-60% of what is recommended. Meaning, it continues to pile on debt at a rate that nearly negates the money coming in.
Nevertheless, Murphy knows where his bread is buttered, and while making a $4.8 billion payment to this fund this year, he came out saying that he plans to make a full $6.4 billion payment next fiscal year, according to NJ.com.
Now, there are only two places where that extra money can come from, as Murphy and the unions cannot account for the volatility of investment returns for one of their sources of funding — which, currently, the administration expects to be 7 percent.
The only other ways are to serve up some fresh federal money — which was given to the state for the purpose of “COVID relief” — or to raise taxes. The former is why many have criticized President Biden’s first COVID relief bill. The latter is undoubtedly something that Garden State residents can expect to happen — even though Murphy has denied that he will do so, the money has come to come from somewhere. New Jersey’s pension system has about $174 billion in liabilities on the table.
The NJEA goes on to praise Murphy’s work on their members’ paychecks, aka “school funding.” Never mind that teachers from multiple school districts will see millions of dollars cut from their budgets over the next few years, which, at the time, prompted some teachers to march out and protest.
But the union brushes all of this off in their blatant politicking, calling the plan from Murphy’s challenger, Jack Ciattarelli — which calls for a “flatter” school-funding formula — “the opposite of equitable approach to school funding.” While it is challenging to keep up with the ever-changing definition of equality, it is hard to imagine anything more equal than a similar amount of money being distributed to all school districts.
And to make the state’s fiscal situation even worse, in addition to the already inflated school budget, the union is championing Murphy’s vow earlier this year to bring universal pre-K to New Jersey — a proposal that, conservatively, will cost taxpayers an additional $2.2 billion a year.
But the school funding argument operates in tandem with the NJEA’s argument for “tax fairness,” which is also listed on their candidate comparison website. In that section, the NJEA once again mentions Murphy’s school funding overhaul. But this time, they attempt to connect the incumbent’s millionaire’s tax with increased educational spending.
While it is easy to point out that the relatively minuscule gains of such taxes are dwarfed by the number of people who move out of the state every year, it is worth taking a moment to look at the problem the union wants you to believe that Murphy fixed, which is that the schools needed more funding in the first place. New Jersey already spends the third-largest amount per student in the country at around $20,000 per student per fiscal year.
Now, New Jersey schools are not poorly ranked by any extent of the imagination, but their students are also not walking out of high school with the bachelor’s degrees that the taxpayers are footing the bill for. The lie the union puts forward here, though, is that more spending aids in education. Such a premise is defeated when one observes that the District of Columbia school system spends more than either New Jersey or Connecticut with the $22,406 they spend per pupil. No one speaks of DC schools as a model of scholastic achievement.
It is clear that the union needs Murphy far more than Murphy needs the union. Public opinion about teacher’s unions has certainly taken a hit as the public has dealt with their needless recalcitrance over COVID-19. Add in ideological battles about critical race theory playing out inside school board meetings across the country, and you have an endorsement that may be harm than good for a political candidate.
For the NJEA, however, Murphy is life-support. Not only will parents begin to get wise to their own endorsement of CRT, but powerful state Democratic leaders like Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) have been discussing the need for pension reform for years.
Insouciant voters in New Jersey should take note of all of this. The Murphy administration has failed to make New Jersey prosperous for anyone other than public workers. And with the ideological conformity and overwrought bargaining power of the NJEA, it is time for them to get motivated and vote their interests by rebuking them.
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