Posted on 04/09/2012 11:28:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
Illinois has combined $137 billion in pension and healthcare liabilities on top of $9 billion in current unpaid bills. Yet, Illinois legislators will not even ask 6-figure pensioners to pick up a portion of their health premiums.
The Chicago Tribune reports Surprise! You owe another $54 billion
If Springfield won’t ask six-figure pension beneficiaries to pick up a portion of their health premiums, what are the odds that state legislators will confront their pension monster?
The state of Illinois admits to $83 billion in pension underfunding, a staggering weight on today's and tomorrow's taxpayers. Add to that the as yet uncalculated billions in unfunded pension obligations for city, county and other local governments.
A second, often overlooked time bomb merrily ticking for governments nationwide is the cost of health insurance for all those retirees. That number, too, is hard to gauge, because health care costs — like future investment returns — are unknowable. Yet governments typically don't put aside money for future health care, as they do for future pensions. The culture is to pay-as-you-go.
In Illinois, that means pay-as-you-go-even-more-broke. The Illinois Policy Institute, a right-leaning think tank, now is releasing 133 pages of frightening data. Beyond that $83 billion in unfunded pensions, state government alone faces an unfunded liability of more than $54 billion in retiree health liabilities over the next 30 years.
During the 2011 deliberations, two groups helped block retiree health reform: lawmakers of both parties who have state institutions (and thus state retirees) in their districts, and well-paid lobbyists whose prior careers in government entitle them to, yes, fat public pensions. If that happens this year, we want to read names.
By the last of the IPI's 133 pages, we conjured one question, then a follow-up:
How could Illinois pols do this to taxpayers?
And come November, will voters finally exact some consequences?
Who is to blame for this mess?
so...tolls are going up again?
Unions are a cancer in our society just like the welfare parasites. Unions must be destroyed.
Bump
The population of IL is, what, about 13,000,000? And of those, let’s be generous, and say that 7,000,000 of them actually pay taxes. (Not likely.) So, the debt for this ONE item in IL is approximately $21,000 per taxpayer. Right now. Or $63,000 for a 3-person household that pays taxes. That is just for this one item, for this one state. This cannot turn out well.
The FL Supremes (5-2 radical lib) ruled it unconstitutional.
With judges like these, we don't need Bam to live in a tyranny.
“That is just for this one item, for this one state. This cannot turn out well.”
It certainly isn’t working out well in CA, NJ, or NY; anyone thinking of setting up shop there (whether as a company or a taxpaying family) has been forewarned: You are buying into our debt trap; if you buy a home it will steadily bleed value as 1) the taxes rise to deal with the debt, or 2) the taxes cannot rise enough to deal with it, so services stop and you end up living in a $500K home on a street that looks like Mogadishu’s main drag.
Take a religious exemption and direct all of her union dues money to a charity. See if she can get another 5 or so to do the same because the union thugs will give her a hard time.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2680038/posts
Of course, the union will try to force her to give the money to Planned Parenthood or some other left wing group, but she needs to challenge them on that.
That is actually a good idea. I don’t know if her contract allows it (we had to fight to get out of United Way), but I will look into it!
You just can't pay three or four work forces, with only one working.
It is federal law. There are pro-bono attorneys who can give her help if she needs it.
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