The winner of this year's New Jersey governor's race will begin his term with a multibillion-dollar deficit, mountainous debt, and a pension system that at last check was $34 billion in the hole.

The shortfalls, persistent for years but even more daunting after a recession, will add pressure to raise taxes or drastically cut spending, potentially leaving less money for schools, roads, parks, and other needs.

Neither Gov. Corzine nor Republican challenger Christopher J. Christie has provided in-depth plans to tackle the financial issues, which offer few easy choices, but in interviews last week they sketched broad outlines of how they would approach the problems.

Corzine talked about maintaining key services during hard times. To him, the state's continuing financial woes are a result of a "Bush-led" recession that hit after the governor made progress early in his term. He said he had found ways to maintain funding for schools and health care and would continue to do so as he tried to restore financial stability.

"Making sure that we continue to invest in the education of our kids, the provision of health care in our society, particularly for our children, and making sure that we have public safety and those fundamental safety-net issues are our first-order priorities," Corzine said.

Christie said Corzine had spent more than the state could afford. He said leaders should focus on top concerns and make tough calls to scale back elsewhere, although he did not name his priorities.

"He just wants to have the money continue to flow in so he can make everybody happy," Christie said. "The job of the governor is to make decisions, and he has failed to make decisions, and as a result that has led us into an economic ditch."

Many states could be described that way, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which reported this month that 48 states had deficits this year. Its deputy director of state fiscal projects, Jon Shure, said the shortfalls likely would continue.

Shure, who was an aide to Democratic Gov. Jim Florio in the early 1990s, said federal stimulus money had softened the blow, for now.

"One hopes that states use this breathing space to get their economy in order," he said.

So far, the fiscal steps Corzine and Christie have described would cover only a fraction of the deficits likely to persist in coming years. Some plans - Corzine and Christie both called for boosting property-tax rebates - would add to expenses.

Corzine said that he saw hope for an economic recovery that would increase revenue, and that he expected more federal aid to help cover other shortfalls. He said he would incrementally restore funding for the state's pension system, calling that and the rebates "top-drawer" priorities.

Both candidates said they would make government more efficient.

Christie said he would pare the state workforce and reduce overtime costs. Which programs get cut and which are supported, he said, would depend on talks with the Legislature. He said he would slash income taxes across the board during his first term, though he would not say exactly when or by how much. He has also pledged to cut corporate taxes.

Corzine's record

Much of the debate centers on Corzine's record after four years with fellow Democrats in control of the Legislature. He came to Trenton touting his Wall Street fiscal credentials; last week, he said he had "made progress" during his first term despite facing a historic drop in revenue during the last year.

But his work to repair state finances was at times overtaken by election-year politics and spending on issues close to his heart.

In 2006, Corzine inherited a $28.3 billion budget soaked with red ink. He took the politically risky, but he said necessary, step of raising the sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent. With a strong economy behind him, he resumed significant payments to the state's ailing pension fund, which other governors had long ignored.

"We worked diligently with matching incoming revenues with outgoing expenditures," Corzine said Wednesday.

He said he had cut the executive branch's workforce by 5,700 and trimmed state employee benefits, including raising the retirement age to 60, from 55.