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The pension attack continues

The group of millionaires and billionaires who want to cut the pensions of hard working public employees are scrambling to put together a new proposal after their original plan was exposed as adding $34 billion to pension costs.

Since last spring, the Chicago-based Civic Committee has tried to ram through the legislature a bill that would have cut pension benefits for active employees. But, as IEA reported last week, the Civic Committee's plan would have caused the state's cost for pensions to skyrocket by $34 billion over 15 years, despite the plan being promoted as a way for the state to save money.

Now, in reaction to this embarrassment, the billionaires are reportedly tweaking their proposal to try to eliminate the additional damage to taxpayers. It is clear that this group cannot be trusted when it comes to pensions. They have not made their proposal available for analysis by experts, so the impact of the plan on taxpayers and the financial health of the pension systems cannot be determined independently.

We need all 132,000 IEA members to participate in the battle to stop illegal and unfair pension legislation from becoming law.

The new plan, which may be introduced during next week's legislative session, is unacceptable:

1. It is unconstitutional to reduce benefits for active employees.

2. For most education employees, their pension is only form of retirement security because teachers can't collect social security.

3. It is unfair to ask teachers, who loyally paid their portion into the state's pension system, to contribute 50 percent more if they want to benefit from the system they've counted on all their careers. The pension problem is a result of politicians using the pension systems as a credit card to pay for other state services.