I'm one of those government retirees that a lot of Freepers think should have their pensions eliminated. Our retirement fund is completely self-funded from investments. About twenty years ago the city attempted to force us to use a significant part of the pension to make "low interest home loans to individuals who could not access normal mortgage instruments." When the pension board refused, they tried to order us to do it. We refused. Our pension is still sound, and requires no contributions from the city, except for those contributions made as part of our compensation package before retirement.
28% of my compensation package was retirement. During the early 1980s, there was a move (by Democrats) to take all of the money in our retirement fund and use it to prop up Social Security. In exchange for taking all our retirement, they would put us in Social Security.
The lesson here is that whenever someone accumulates any amount of money, the government believes they should get it. They have magnificent plans to make everything better, and all it requires is everything anyone has worked for, plus some more.
With all the Cadillac benefits our elected officials get, I wonder if they would miss any of it - - if somebody figured out how to take it from them.