Once in office, Mr. Christie seized on public resentment about government spending and entitlements to push through changes to public employee benefits, impose a cap on property taxes and end the practice of giving teachers tenure automatically after three years.
It proposed capping discretionary spending, the sort that needs annual authorisation, raising Social Security taxes and limiting benefits, imposing a raft of cost controls on federal health care programmes, and eliminating tax breaks while lowering tax rates.
They also underscore the need to deploy alternative ways of avoiding the misuse of the benefits: imposing work or training requirements, as well as introducing financial incentives (see below).
To the Editor: "Don't Go After Military Pensions" asks that military officers be exempted from the cuts to pensions and other benefits being imposed across the country on teachers, firefighters and other public-sector employees.
"The SNP and Scottish government ministers have consistently called for a moratorium on all benefit sanctions imposed on those individuals who do not meet the conditions attached to their benefits," he said.
While some in Washington portray this benefit cut as nothing more than a "technical tweak," the truth is that it would be a benefit cut imposed on the oldest and most vulnerable Americans who would be least able to afford it.
Workplace regulation has ground to a halt, largely because of the kind of cost-benefit analysis imposed by Congress and championed by the administration's regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein.
The number of benefit sanctions imposed on people with mental health problems has increased by over 600 per cent over the last four years, Department for Work and Pensions statistics show.
It reiterates guidelines first issued by Mr Clinton and adhered to by Mr Bush: rules should be subject to cost-benefit analyses, imposed in the least costly way and leave companies free to work out how to comply.
Athens' fragile two-party coalition had promised that at least 70% of the surplus would be used to redress cuts and benefit losses imposed on pensioners and other Greeks worst hit by the crisis.
