Say WA? Evergreen State ping Quick link: WA State Board
FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this ping list.
Ping sionnsar if you see a Washington state related thread.
Posted on 03/07/2011 2:22:28 PM PST by Eva
Most people know that our $13 trillion national debt is endangering America’s credit rating and pushing the United States closer to bankruptcy. But hidden beneath the surface is another ticking time bomb that threatens economic collapse : unfunded public employee pensions.
...Historically, increasing public employee pensions has been a practical way to resolve a budget crisis. .... voting to approve richer pensions is easy because they know they’ll be long gone before the bill comes due.
...According to an analysis by the Pew Center on the States, state and local governments now owe at least $1 trillion to public employee pension accounts. To pay that debt, taxpayers would have to spend $1 million a day for the next 2,740 years. That works out to about $8,800 for each American household, on top of their estimated $120,000 share of our national debt.
..Simply put, state lawmakers didn’t make the required payments to their pension plans. According to the Washington Post, “They failed to squirrel away enough money to pay retiree health benefits and, perhaps most egregious, they increased their benefits without figuring out how to pay for them.”
...Pew’s $1 trillion figure — tallied through the end of the 2008 fiscal year — is conservative given that it doesn’t capture the stock market losses incurred in the second half of that year. To make matters worse, the study did not include many city, county and municipal pension plans, which are thought to have similar funding shortfalls.
What about Washington state? According to Pew, state lawmakers have failed to make the total required pension contributions since 2001. In fact, between 1999 and 2008, Washington’s pension liabilities outpaced assets almost 2 to 1. And those figures don’t account for state investment losses due to the recession.
(Excerpt) Read more at columbian.com ...
Say WA? Evergreen State ping The only thing Princess Gregoire has to do is just raise taxes (yet again) to cover it. Problem solved.
The sooner the politicians wake up to this, the better.
Reform advocates are spotlighting those with extravagant pensions
— $100,000 or more — as a way to get the public’s attention and
emphasize that the current system is unsustainable.
http://www.modbee.com/editorials/story/803636.html
Perhaps the real reason why public-sector pension costs have not been tackled is that the full bill has never been revealed to taxpayers.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13988606
http://www.pensiontsunami.com/public.php
state lawmakers didn’t make the required payments to their pension plans.
And that should be a crime. Now since they know this, are they putting money aside now as they should or are they just going to continue to spend the money that is owed. I know the answer to that. Well guess what? If these folks are not getting their pensions, they are not the only ones to suffer. Everyone will.
I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo danged glad that my wife and I finally got out of that communist slime pit.
Last year, when the SEIU sued Gregoire for funding the new SEIU contracts, the plan was to get the court to order the funding and a tax hike to pay for them. It didn’t work, the court ruled against the SEIU and Gregoire proceeded to fund the contracts without the tax hike.
The SEIU owns WA state, it will never happen, here. Gregoire and the legislature just proceeded to pass part of Obamacare that wasn’t required until 2014, last week, in spite of the fact that our state attorney general was part of the Florida law suit against it.
The left will bankrupt the state before they give in. The latest assault is pushing freight trains, carrying coal to ship to China that will provide a few longshoremen jobs, but destroy countless other jobs and businesses along the water front as they are cut off from their clients and customers by the trains. The trains also run along the coast near the nicest and most expensive view homes in the county. The trains are being pushed by the same people who pushed the Obamacare, the SEIU.
Yeah, we’re beginning to make plans to get out of here, too. It’s hard right now, though.
I read that California has over 19,000 retired state workers who are receiving pensions between $75,000 and $100,000/yr.
Washington State public employees average about $20,000. I’d like to know how much our teachers get per year in pension funds.
It’s all good. You and I will get to bail CA out ,too.
“Lawmaker Introduces $165 Billion Union Pension Bailout Bill”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2520155/posts
Unions want to dump pensions on taxpayers
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2487566/posts
...and it will be a lot more than $165B
I wonder where she got the funding. From the general fund no doubt. That’s where everything goes now.
Irregardless of their political power, they can't fight arithmetic. The pensions and retiree health benefits the state has promised are simply unaffordable. 4-5 years down the line, the payouts will be so high that the state won't be able to pay them, and there's nothing the SEIU can do about that.
The left will bankrupt the state before they give in
That's fine, because it's coming, and we're only a few years away.
There aren't too many states better off than ours, fiscally. And very few states can boast not having an income tax. The spending on unions will be brought under control when the state runs out of money. It has to be. There's no other way.
It's going to be a lot easier for politicians to cut gold plated union benefits than it essential state services. Furthermore, given Washingtonians' repeated overwhelming rejection of the income tax, there really aren't any easy ways to significantly hike taxes. Property taxes and sales taxes are already very close to their global maximum on the Laffer curve. I'd take high sales and property taxes over an income tax any day.
Relax. Things aren't as bad as they seem.
Our state, WA is among the top three states, having the largest budget shortfall as a percentage of the GDP. We are also among the top most heavily taxed states in the country. I think we got knocked out of the top 5 when VT and another state made enacted big tax increases.
Just because we don’t have an income tax, doesn’t mean that we aren’t taxed.
No, it isn’t easier for politicians to cut the union benefits. Why do you thing that Gregoire is proposing that we make the cuts to welfare and schools??? ...because she knows that no one likes those cuts and she thinks that they can get tax increases through if she threatens dire alternatives. Property taxes in WA are about the same as in California.
That's a silly ranking. The big problems aren't in the current budget deficit, but in the long-term unfunded liabilities. Were're better than average along this dimension, according to Forbes:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/20/global-debt-bomb-business-wall-street-debt-10_land.html
We are also among the top most heavily taxed states in the country. I think we got knocked out of the top 5 when VT and another state made enacted big tax increases.
You are incorrect. In terms of the average resident's state and local tax burden as a percentage of the average resident's income, we rank 33rd, which means there are only 17 states a state and local tax burden lower than ours.
http://retirementliving.com/tax_per_capita_2009.pdf
Voters don't care much about welfare, so it will go before union benefits. I don't think the school funding cuts will materialize, and neither will tax increases.
The dems will cut everything middle class voters don't care much about before they cut union benefits, that much I agree with you about. And there's enough of that kind of stuff to close the budget gap for a while. But once all that stuff is gone, and the big pension obligations start coming due, there will be no choice but to do here what what Chris Christie is doing in New Jersey.
...because she knows that no one likes those cuts and she thinks that they can get tax increases through if she threatens dire alternatives. Property taxes in WA are about the same as in California.
Yup. Which is to say, it's not feasible to raise them any more.
The dems will be caught between a rock and a hard place. They won't be able to get much more revenue out of the taxes the public is willing to accept, they won't be able to implement an income tax, and they'll have already cut everything that is easier to cut than union benefits.
When that day comes, and it will, Washington will be ready for its Chris Christie.
Queen Christine simply has to cut all of Medicaid, instead of just cutting...it....let the disabled rot in the streets rather than have a sensible and rational policy in limiting govt pensions....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.