Ignore all the gubernatorial election year rhetoric you are hearing.

The fiscal prospects for New Jersey have rarely been this bleak. During the past seven years of the Christie administration, the state has had eleven credit rating downgrades. States are not permitted under federal statutes to file for bankruptcy; otherwise, New Jersey would be a future prime prospect.

The structural deficits will continue to worsen. And the teachers’ and state employees’ pension funds are grossly underfunded and face the future prospect of default.

In order that this nightmarish fiscal prospect can be averted, there are two measures that are inevitable during the next decade:

1. Broad based state tax increases will be enacted. It is not clear whether this will involve sales taxes, income taxes, or both, but broad based the increases will be.

2. For future retirees, the pensions will be converted from defined benefit plans into defined contribution plans. Let us not mince words: this definitely entails a reduction in benefits to future retirees.

The enactment of both these measures will involve political bloodbaths and dire policy impacts.

The Republicans and the various state business associations will wage a holy war against any tax increases. The Democrats and the teachers’ and state employees’ unions – the NJEA and the CWA – will fight to the death any conversion of the pension programs from defined benefit to defined contribution plans.

Then there is the matter of the necessity of funding a new rail tunnel from New Jersey into Manhattan. This is a mess created by Governor Chris Christie, who used the money earmarked for the previously proposed ARC tunnel to replenish the state’s budget for road repairs. This was done so that Governor Christie could run for President without raising the gasoline tax, which he promptly raised once his pathetic presidential campaign was over. Christie should amend his Federal Election Commission filings to list the Treasury of the State of New Jersey as an in-kind contributor.

Christie will ask President Donald Trump to bail him out of his self-created mess by funding a new tunnel. Trump’s response will be the same that former President Gerald Ford gave the then beleaguered Mayor of New York Abe Beame, when he first applied for a federal bailout in 1975: Drop dead. While The Donald may be moving the summer White House from Mar-a-Lago to Bedminster, New Jersey, he will see no access problems getting in and out of Manhattan, since he can take a helicopter both ways.

There will be very serious policy consequences from state tax increases and pension revisions. The tax increases will hamper economic growth, and the pension revisions will make it much more difficult to attract and hire competent teachers and governmental professionals. How else, however, will the New Jersey long term fiscal crisis be resolved?

This begs a further question: Given the horrific fiscal prospects, why would anybody want to run for governor of New Jersey in 2017?

Alan J. Steinberg served as Regional Administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as Executive Director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission under former New Jersey Governor Christie Whitman.