Free Republic

(The Center Square) – Every man, woman and child in Illinois is on the hook for $37,000 for the state’s unfunded public pension liabilities, according to a new report. The seventh annual American Legislative Exchange Council's "Unaccountable and Unaffordable" report on public pension liabilities pegs the amount of debt across the nation at nearly $7 trillion. Illinois comes in second to last.

Illinois’ five statewide pensions system saw their debt increase by nearly $10 billion to a grand total of $140 billion in fiscal year 2022. Pensions will cost the state nearly $11 billion next year, but that’s still $4.4 billion too little. Illinois’ state pension debt now stands at $139.7 billion, according to a new report from the Illinois General Assembly’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability. That is up $9.8 billion from 2021, when state pensions were benefitting from healthy investment returns. After markets cooled substantially, state pension debt in the fiscal year that ended July 1 continued to grow,...

Nancy Pelosi is passing her gavel to someone else (most likely McCarthy R-CA), but her legacy like that of fellow spendaholic John Boeher (RINO-Ohio) and Paul Rino (RINO-WI) is reckless spending and debt load. Since 2007 when Pelosi took the gavel as Speaker of the US House, Federal debt has risen from $5.8 trillion in Q4 2006 to $31.4 trillion today, an increase of over 250%. Pelosi’s spending spree was continued by RINOs Boehner and Ryan before SanFranNac retook the gavel and continued Congress’ spend-a-holic ways. Nothing has been the same since the financial crisis and Pelosi became Speaker in...

The start of a new week and the US Treasury 10-year yield is up 10 basis points, always a noteworthy change. And with it, the 30-year mortgage rate should climb. Meanwhile, the political elite party in Washington DC as the US National Debt hit $31.4 TRILLION and unfunded liabilities (the amount that the political elites promised Americans) hit $173 TRILLION for a grand total of … $204 TRILLION. Since Biden/Pelosi/Schumer are in a lame duck session with Republicans taking the House in January, let’s see if Republicans can halt the insanity in Washington DC. Be that as it may, Fed...

The new ‘minimum wage’ for government work is now $100,000+... So, just who is making all of this money? Meet the Illinois government employee $100,000 Club. It's comprised of 132,188 public employees and retirees who earned a new ‘minimum wage’ of $100,000 or more. While crime skyrockets in the neighborhoods, test scores plummet in the public schools, and inflation decimates private-sector paychecks, the Illinois public employee class is living the good life. Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found nearly 500 educators in the public schools with salaries between $200,000 and $439,000. In small towns, city managers made up to $341,300. Three...

Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill into law on Friday that allows county workers across the state to collectively bargain. Senate Bill 22-230 was introduced by Democrats in April and given final passage on May 11, the last day of the 2022 legislative session. Polis’ office said in a news release that the new law ensures county workers “have a voice in their working conditions.” House Majority Leader Daneya Esgar, D-Pueblo, said in a statement that the law “allows county workers to unionize if they choose to so that they can have a seat at the table to discuss decisions...

About 1.3 million Americans could have their retirement funds at risk if Congress can't come up with the money to pay the benefits people were promised. That is because a number of multiemployer pension plans are on the brink of running out of money. This week, Congress took a stab at solving the problem with the markup of the Rehabilitation for Multiemployer Pensions Act. Though it garnered far less attention than the testimony of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who was on Capitol Hill talking about interest rates and the economy, it was no less important. Retirees' financial futures hang...

Without pension reform, progressive income tax amendment guarantees tax hikes on Illinois’ middle class. ( Full title). The current progressive income tax proposal would fail to pay down the state's unfunded liability while damaging Illinois' economy. On May 20, Democrats in the Illinois House Revenue & Finance Committee approved Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s prized progressive tax constitutional amendment. While the Senate had previously passed a new income tax structure – already different from the governor’s original proposal – the House Committee also passed the amendment without putting in income tax rates. ... progressive tax proponents need to face that without pension...

Truth in Accounting .. based on fiscal year 2016 comprehensive annual financial reports .. found that 64 cities do not have enough money to pay all of their bills, and in total, the cities have racked up $335.4 billion in unfunded municipal debt. ... Government reports are lengthy, cumbersome, and sometimes misleading documents ... taxpayers and citizens deserve easy-to-understand, truthful, and transparent financial information from their governments. ... to balance the budget, elected officials have not included the true costs of the government in their budget calculations and have pushed costs onto future taxpayers. ... TIA was unable to rank...

Social Security's unfunded liabilities total $12.5 trillion in present-dollar terms over a 75-year timeframe, the administration's trustees reported Thursday, an increase of $1.2 trillion from last year's estimate. The trustees report showed that Social Security's combined trust fund can only pay scheduled benefits through 2034, a projected date that is unchanged from a year ago. Medicare's trust fund, though, is in better shape than previously estimated and will run out a year later than previously anticipated, in 2029. At those dates, beneficiaries would face the prospect of an immediate cut in benefits unless policy were changed in some way to...

Colorado’s pension plan is on track to be fully funded by 2055 — 14 years after the 2041 target date set by the Colorado Legislature in 2010. Now, lawmakers will need to decide if they want to stick to the 2041 target date, or agree that it will take longer than they planned for the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association to have the money to pay for the promised benefits to PERA’s 529,000. The probability of the financial projections, as well as other variables, were discussed today with members of the Colorado Legislative Audit Committee, who heard the results of...

Why Pensions Are A (Big) Black Swan – Chicago’s Unfunded Liabilities Are 10 Times Its Revenues, 50% Of Their Cash That Will Have Go To Pensions. [ Full title ]. ... When talk turns to what might derail today’s debt-driven “recovery,” the big names and easy stories get most of the attention: China with its soaring debt, volatile equities and heavy-handed intervention; Japan with its stratospheric debt and science fictiony demographics; Greece, which needs no explanation; the developing countries with their weak currencies and mountain of dollar-denominated debt. And of course America’s triple bubble of stocks, bonds and derivatives. Underfunded...

A significant number of Americans seem to no longer understand our constitution, our system of government or the structure of our legal system. The outcry over crowdfunding support for litigants is a good example. When Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana, was forced to shut down because of threats, supporters rallied to help them, raising over $800,000 on a GoFundMe fundraising page that had been set up for that purpose. The left went ballistic. It wasn't enough that the owners of the misbegotten restaurant had been given a public flogging for an opinion the press had solicited (as opposed to an...

Renowned economist Laurence Kotlikoff recently testified at the U.S. Senate about the runaway U.S. budget. How bad is it? Kotlikoff says, “I told them the real (2014) deficit was $5 trillion, not the $500 billion or $300 billion or whatever it was announced to be this year. Almost all the liabilities of the government are being kept off the books by bogus accounting. The government is 58% underfinanced. Social Security is 33% underfinanced. So, the entire government enterprise is in worse fiscal shape than Social Security is, but they are both in terrible shape.” So, how much is America on...

You read that right: $210 trillion. A trillion here, a trillion there: pretty soon, we’re talking big money. Professor Lawrence Kotlikoff of Boston University testified before the Senate Budget Committee. As usual, his testimony is shocking The U.S. has a $210 trillion “fiscal gap” and “may well be in worse fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece,” Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff told members of the Senate Budget Committee in written and oral testimony on Feb. 25. “The first point I want to get across is that our nation is broke,” Kotlikoff testified. “Our nation’s broke, and it’s not...

It's expected to be the most passionately debated piece of education policy for the legislative session that begins Feb. 25. Supporters say that Minnesota's current law, at 37 words, doesn't do enough to prevent bullying and that sweeping change is needed. "Nobody should be OK with the fact that all we have to protect students and make schools safe from bullying is 37 words," Kurzer-Zlotnick said. "To me, that's ridiculous." Opponents argue that the 20-page bill goes too far by taking away local control and imposing costly new layers of bureaucracy on schools. "I think it's a bad bill," said...

Scranton could be headed towards another fiscal crisis like the one that resulted in city workers having their pay cut to minimum wage in 2012... Moody’s warned investors that Scranton could be facing the threat of default or bankruptcy thanks to a $20 million budget gap for the fiscal year that begins Jan. 1. The city is supposed to approve a new budget by Nov. 15, which would have to close that deficit to balance the budget. ... A similar crisis hit the city in July 2012, which lead to Mayor Chris Doherty cutting all city workers’ pay to minimum...

A federal lawsuit has revealed one of Obama's rationing plans. The Administration says states can cut Medicaid payments to doctors and other providers to hold down costs -- until they decide not to and states are stuck with the bill. This is a breathtaking statement. President Obama's signature law, Obamacare, adds 16 million people to Medicaid. It offers states the "opportunity" to expand Medicaid at no cost for the first two years, and then offers to pay 90% of the cost in perpetuity of all individuals eligible under the expansion. The law also increases payment to primary care doctors for...

Wanna scare somebody about America's debt on the eve of the Fiscal Cliff? I mean, really scare somebody? Here's a trick. Don't talk about the debt. Talk about "unfunded liabilities." The U.S. national debt comes out to about $16 trillion today. That's something. But it's nothing compared to the extra $87 trillion in unfunded liabilities to Social Security, Medicare, and federal pensions. Here's how that works. If you add up all of the U.S. government's promises to pay retirement and health care benefits for the next 75 years and subtract the projected tax revenue dedicated to those programs over the...

MADISON – The combined assets of U.S. state-administered public pension systems are approaching the Gross Domestic Product of the United Kingdom – cost of the Olympics not included. And potential liabilities of the financially troubled system is nearly that of the GDPs of Russia and Canada combined. The 222 state-administered defined benefit retirement plans totaled $2.5 trillion in cash and investment holdings in 2011, a 14.6 percent increase from $2.2 trillion in 2010, according to new statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. By comparison, the United Kingdom posted $2.417 trillion in nominal gross domestic product in 2011, the sixth largest...