Posted on 06/17/2013 3:04:36 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Texas Republican John Cornyn supplemented his Senate salary with a trio of public pensions last year from his days as a Texas judge and elected official—a practice some fiscal watchdog groups have attacked as “double dipping.”
Cornyn, who is the minority whip and the No. 2 ranking Republican in the Senate, reported collecting $65,383 in public retirement benefits in 2012 in addition to his $174,000 salary as a U.S. senator.
Cornyn’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Elected to the Senate in 2002, Cornyn is a former district judge, Texas Supreme Court justice, and state attorney general. In 2012, he collected pensions from three separate state retirement programs.
The biggest of Cornyn’s pensions—$48,807— is from the Judicial Retirement System of Texas. He served on the state Supreme Court from 1991 to 1997.
He reported another $10,132 in retirement benefits last year from the Employees Retirement System of Texas—the pension fund for state elected officials and workers. Cornyn served as Texas attorney general from 1999 to 2002.
In a series of financial-disclosure amendments that he began filing last July, Cornyn disclosed that he had actually been collecting that $10,132 annual pension as far back as 2006. He had not listed it on his original disclosure reports from 2006 to 2010.
Cornyn also reported a $6,444 retirement distribution from the Texas County and District Retirement System. He was a state district judge from 1985 to 1989, according to his official bio, when the governor appointed him presiding judge for the Fourth Administrative Judicial Region of Texas, where he oversaw judicial administration for a 22-county region.
Cornyn, 61, is not the first or only prominent Texas Republican to draw both a public pension and a public salary.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
Cornyn isn’t double-dipping. That would be wrong. He’s TRIPLE-DIPPING and that’s completely different!
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I don’t think he’s done anything vaguely illegal. The overpayment in the public sector, especially with pensions for early retirees, is obscene and should be changed, but that’s not really Cornyn’s fault.
But he uses his position in the Senate to further his communist policies. And he used his position in the NRSC to try putting people like Crist and Specter in office.
He fulfilled each position and he reaps the benefits from them. Nothing wrong with that.
Did he do the job expected for those pensions? Yes! Case closed. Everyone has the same opportunities that this Senator had and either didn’t do, didn’t want to do the work involved or didn’t have the intellect it takes to do the jobs. Good for him for planning his life he desired. Since rules have changed and the pensions today are not as good starting out. People will have to make decisions knowing this.
You will make a fine serf.
Oh, please don't confuse anyone with the facts.. You know Cornyn's money and pensions are bad, and should be redistributed to poor people.
Same thing is done in the corporate world.
Speaking from personal experience, with a retired close relative who draws three pensions from three companies. Plus Social Security.
And he earned every dime of it.
He accepted it without question, didn’t he?
Yes, and I expect he believed he earned it.
Throughout all history before nations fell those on the 'inside' looted the treasuries. It didn't help them much as at the 'crash' their money became basically as worthless as their lives. eg: The French Revolution
This is NOTHING compared to what goes on in California. There is nothing illegal at all about most of it. It may show what dummies the public is for electing and re-electing politicians who write perfectly legal laws to feed themselves lavishly at the public trough like this, but it is perfectly legal as long as the public is dumb enough to tolerate it.
The public can’t really understand all of this — as Obama said of something “it’s above their pay grade”.
I have had difficulty understanding what TX see in Cornyn, but I don’t think he has ever lost an election. People just feel comfortable with their “friendly incumbent”.
Correct!
I am not a big Cornyn fan, but he didn’t invent those retirements, he is taking what we stupid voters allowed our elected politicians to make law. Obviously put in place by our dear Texas Yeller Dog dems in their many years of full house politics.
No way show anyone get anything more than “proportioned” retirement depending on how many years served. It should be changed to “accumulated years” from all public service.
Its hard to see any logical justification where public employee or service retirement should be grossly greater than regular private retirement.
More than that he’s working on a fourth.
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