There is a concerted effort to raid public sector employee
pensions to give corporations and the wealthy tax breaks …
A contract is generally a written agreement, often concerning
business, tenancy, or employment that is intended to be enforceable by
law and because it is an agreement it is safe to conclude that two sides
negotiated the contract’s conditions which are why they are enforceable
by law. Around the nation public sector employees are seeing their
defined retirement benefits from protected pension funds being slashed
because repugicans claim deficits are unsustainable and that states and
the federal government are broke. And yet the deficits are not enough
to stop corporate tax subsidies that exceed the cost of funding
retirement benefits.
In a new
analysis from taxpayer watchdog group
Good Jobs First, 10 states claimed they were drowning in budget deficits to justify Draconian retiree benefit cuts, but in those 10 states “
the total annual cost of corporate subsidies, tax breaks and loopholes exceeds the total current annual pension costs.”
The practice is part of a tactic an American Legislative Exchange
Council (ALEC) sister organization funded by the Kochs, the State Policy
Network (SPN), is ramping up to eliminate public sector pensions on a
nationwide scale. The idea that pension and retirement funds are fair
game for the wealthy is a Koch brother and Wall Street philosophy that repugicans in states are willingly implementing with impunity because
they utter the term “
deficit.”
For example, in Louisiana repugicans claimed the state’s annual
pension contributions of $348 million is unaffordable and used the
alleged shortfall to
call for cuts
to public employees’ negotiated retirement incomes. However, while
claiming they are broke the same repugicans support giving subsidies,
loopholes, and tax breaks to corporations at five times the cost of the
state’s obligation to retirees every year. In Illinois, Governor Pat
Quinn, a Democrat, just signed legislation
to cut
state workers’ pensions even though the state spends $500 million more
each year on corporate subsidies than it cost to fund its pension
system. in Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is expected to propose similar
cuts to municipal employees’ retirement benefits and cited a
budget shortfall to
close schools, but
supports $300 million in spending on corporate subsidies, including
a massive gift to a private university to construct a new basketball arena.
One of America’s most notorious crusaders to kill public pensions, corrupt New Jersey governor Chris Christie (r),
refused
to make the actuarially necessary pension fund contributions and
claimed New Jersey had no money to meet its obligations to public-sector
workers, and to slash state workers’ pensions. Then, as if by magic, he
handed out a
record $1.5 billion in special tax breaks to large corporations and insisted there was still
plenty of money
left for new income tax cuts to benefit the rich; all while claiming
the state was too broke to fund its pension system. Americans paying
attention to the recent farm bill witnessed a related event when House repugicans demanded $8.7 billion in cuts to food stamps due to “
deficit concerns” and promptly increased subsidies
for corporate agribusiness that the conservative American Enterprise
Institute reported increases annual farm subsidies by $15 billion.
The idea of cutting retiree benefits to pay for corporate subsidies
and tax cuts are not a new phenomenon. In 2010 Rhode Island repugican
governor Donald Carcieri
urged the state to give former baseball player Curt Schilling $75 million
to relocate his video game company from Massachusetts to Rhode Island. The state
failed to monitor what the taxpayer subsidy was being used for and when Schilling’s firm promptly lost the money, taxpayers were
on the hook
for $112 million in principal and interest payments. At the same time
the state had enough money to give taxpayer dollars to Schilling, and
$356 million in corporate subsidies annually, the state treasurer
demanded cuts to public worker pensions as well as “
raising the
minimum retirement age, suspending annual cost-of-living increases and
replacing the contracted defined-benefit pension with a hybrid
401(k)-style plan” according to the Providence Journal. It is no surprise that the Economic Policy Institute
documented that the pension fund shortfall was “
due
not to overly generous benefits, but to the failure of state and local
government employers to pay their required share of pensions’ cost” because it used money owed to pension funds to pay for
$356 million a year in corporate subsidies.
Politicians cannot have it both ways; if a state is broke they are
broke. If that is the case they cannot afford to hand out corporate
subsidies or tax cuts for the rich, especially if there is no money to
pay negotiated and guaranteed retirement benefits. If a state is so
flush with money they can afford to give out corporate subsidies and tax
cuts for the rich because they failed to meet their obligation to pay
their share into employee pension funds and then cut benefits, retirees
have every right under the law to haul them into court for breach of
contract like any other business and the court is obliged to force the
state to fulfill its obligation. Of course, there is a reasonable
solution that is anathema to primarily repugicans and that is raising
revenue by increasing taxes and eliminating loopholes for corporations
and the wealthy who have taken enough taxpayer money over the past ten
years.
There is a concerted effort to raid public sector employee pensions
to give corporations and the wealthy tax breaks that was the purview of repugicans but is gaining support among some state-level Democrats. In
part it is because of a well-planned repugican campaign to portray
public employees as overpaid and spoiled welfare recipients even though
states negotiated pension contracts and defined benefits. Groups like
ALEC, the Kochs, Wall Street, and the State Policy Network
have specifically targeted public sector pensions for raiding because
they have nearly exhausted all other programs’ resources and the idea of
pension funds, like the Social Security Trust, sitting there with money
that belongs to the workers is too tempting to pass up.
Every worker, whether they are public sector employees paying into a
pension fund, or private sector employees paying into Social Security
did so in good faith and it is their money; not the Koch brothers, Wall
Street, corporations, or the wealthy’s. Whether it is a state’s
malfeasance in not fulfilling its obligation to pay into pension funds
according to their agreement with employees, or outright theft to enrich
corporations and the rich, cutting or eliminating retirement benefits
is a breach of contract and public employees deserve justice; and their
own pensions paid in full according to the negotiated agreement with the
states. It is despicable that some Democrats are joining the likes of repugicans, the Kochs, and their Wall Street cohort to rob public
sector employees’ retirement savings, but that is the price many
Americans are paying since repugicans made the term “deficit” the
overriding reason to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the rest of
the population. Tragically, it is not going to end until 98% of the
population is in poverty that appears to be gaining support among
politicians jockeying for billions of dollars in corporate campaign
contributions.
Today is - Get Out Your Guitar Day
King County deputy Patrick "KC" Saulet 
