Washington, D.C. (Right Side News) Senator Jim DeMint: On Thursday, December 8th, Joint Economic Committee Vice Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) and I released a shocking new study about what could eventually turn into the Mother of All Bailouts: state and local government employee pension systems. Though hidden from the public by political accounting tricks, state pension systems are already $3 trillion in the hole, and in almost every state the situation is only getting worse.
Many pension systems are already below 50% funded. Eleven states’ pension funds are projected to run out of money by 2020. State and local politicians facing underfunded pension systems pretend to “fix” the problem by recklessly “assuming” unrealistically high returns on the pension funds’ investments.
While private businesses have shifted away from defined-benefit retirement plans and toward defined-contribution retirement plans in recent decades, virtually all state and local government employees still participate in defined-benefit plans. These plans are funded by contributions from employees as well as the government (i.e., taxpayers). In 2010, employee contributions to state and local pension plans represented 30% of total contributions while taxpayers were responsible for the remaining 70%. Even if the contributions that state and local governments and their employees make to defined-benefit pension plans and the investment income such contributions generate fall short of the funds necessary to pay promised pension benefits, state and local governments are nonetheless required to pay promised benefits in full by either raising taxes or cutting other spending. While no large state public pension fund has yet to run dry and test what would happen in the absence of available pension assets that will soon change as a number of plans are projected to run out of money in just over five years based on private sector accounting standards.
Download STATES OF BANKRUPTCY PART I: The Coming State Pension Crisis
