CAMDEN — Gov. Chris Christie said today that taking $2.4 billion meant for public-workers' pensions is the only viable way to balance the state budget, and that he has no backup plan in case the courts overrule him.

“There is no Plan B. This is the plan,” Christie said today at a news conference in Camden. “And I have continued confidence that this plan will be supported from whatever legal challenge that goes after us, as I’ve said from the beginning.”

Fourteen public-worker unions are suing Christie in state court in an effort to stop him from shorting the pension system of $2.4 billion that had been promised for this fiscal year and the incoming one.

Union leaders said today that Judge Mary Jacobson would consolidate all the lawsuits and hold a hearing on June 25, five days before the deadline to enact a new state budget.

They argue that the plan is illegal under a pair of laws overhauling the pension system that Christie signed in his first term, and that it violates sections of the New Jersey constitution that prevent the state from breaking contracts.

“This is not something I want to do, but when revenues fall as far short as they have, you have little or no choice,” Christie said today in his first comments since the lawsuits were filed. The governor had a rosy forecast for economic growth this year, but tax collections in the key month of April fell far behind his estimates, and now New Jersey faces a $2.7 billion budget gap through June 2015.

After decades of New Jersey governors who neglected to make full payments into the pension system, saddling it with long-term debt, Christie signed laws in his first term that promised higher payments each year until 2018. Public workers also began to pay more for their health and retirement benefits, their retirement age rose to 65, and their yearly cost-of-living adjustments were frozen.

Combined, Christie said, the changes put New Jersey’s pension fund on a 30-year path to financial stability. But now, if Christie cuts the pension contributions this year and next — from a combined $3.8 billion to $1.38 billion — his plans for pension reform could end up in tatters.

The unions argue that Christie cannot pull out of the bargain now because it would violate the contractual rights that hundreds of thousands of public employees in New Jersey won in 2011 after they began to pay more for their benefits. Under the state and federal constitutions, New Jersey cannot break its own contracts, one of the lawsuits states.

But Christie said he was confident he would prevail in court, simply because there was nothing left to cut on the spending side of the budget, and not enough taxes to raise to cover the whopping $2.7 billion shortfall.

“Since I’ve announced what the plan was, you have not heard boo, nothing, from anybody else in a position of leadership in this state saying they have a different plan that’s able to fill the size of the gap that we have,” Christie said.

Democratic leaders have proposed raising taxes on New Jersey’s wealthiest earners to bring in new revenue, but according to the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services, that plan would bring in only $600 million to $800 million a year.

A lawsuit filed by the state’s largest teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, and four other labor organizations representing policemen and firefighters, argues that Christie cannot disobey the same laws he signed less than four years ago.

“If the governor’s actions, both immediate and future, are permitted to stand, the (pension) systems will become insolvent within a few years: The pension as an actuarial reserve system will collapse,” their lawsuit warns.

But Christie said his plans for saving the pension system had to take a back seat to the more immediate budget crisis. The state budget must be balanced every year by law.

“I’ve not heard one other idea of how to raise approximately $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion from anyone in a position of responsibility in the state either through additional cuts to spending in other parts of the budget or additional revenues that they would raise that would help to fill our gap,” the governor said.

“I have complete confidence that ultimately anybody who looks at this will see that this is what we have to do, not what we want to do, but what we have to do. We have no choice.”

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