Stop, breathe, think...

Slept on all this last night, and played around a little more with numbers, and now a few more thoughts are rattling around over my green tea:

1) If I were to put Christie's entire plan into one sentence ("summarizing" is a "higher order thinking skill"!) it would be:

All teachers take a pay freeze this year and start paying 1.5% for their health insurance, and Christie will reward districts who get their teachers to do by giving them the Social Security/Medicare tax money we'll save from paying lower wages; this will make up almost all of the $820 million he cut in state aid.

2) I see a whole mess of problems with this:

• It's not just teachers, it's ALL school employees.
• He can't give back all the FICA (Social Security/Medicare) money, because he has to account for the offset loss in income tax.
• How reliable is that health insurance number in the face of health reform?
• NJEA says teacher salaries increased by only 3% in 2008-09; Christie's calculations rely on 4.3%, a big enough difference to matter. 
• Is the Gov sure cafeteria workers all got 4.3% increases last year? His Ed Commissioner, Brett Schundler bases the calculations only on teacher contracts (4.3 % is, according the Schundler, the "average teacher contract settlement ." Uh, did you weight that by district size, Brett?).
• If you give them all their numbers (I wouldn't), they're still short.

3) I was really annoyed at the lack of consideration for the income tax offset yesterday. Then I played with the numbers. Twice. And it's obvious the FICA tax refund is a joke. The numbers are so small as to be laughable - he's going to get wage freezes by throwing around a mere $12 million? How can he get so much press for a plan that is so puny?

4) Why does Christie choose to go after teachers instead of health insurers for insane increases? Gee, I wonder why...