Free Republic

Pensioners will be given estimates of how long they have left to live to help them manage their savings, a minister has disclosed. Steve Webb said that the Government wants to provide pensioners with a rough life expectancy when they reach retirement to allow them to make better financial decisions. Experts will take into account factors including gender, where a pensioner lives or whether they smoke, the pensions minister said. Life expectancy should be part of “guidance” given to help people decide how much to save. In last month’s Budget, George Osborne announced the scrapping of rules that force most...

President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress in early March, as part of his fiscal 2015 budget, to reduce some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, according to published reports. Plus, the president wants to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income — and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion a year in new tax revenue, according to a Pensions & Investments report. According to the report, the proposals are designed to direct more of...

A coalition of Chicago public sector unions resistant to a push by Mayor Rahm Emanuel for changes to the pension system released a report Monday that concluded that the city should focus on new or higher taxes instead of significant cuts to benefits. The We Are One Chicago group contended that cutting pension benefits would send negative economic ripples through the city and suburbs where retired Chicago Public Schools and city workers live. The impacts of pension benefit cuts would hit women and people of color in disproportionate numbers and in turn hurt the economies in the city’s African American...

Under December’s budget deal, working-age military retirees — some of whom retire with pensions in their 40s after 20 years of service — would see those pensions grow at a slower pace. Their annual cost-of-living adjustments would be pegged to the rate of inflation minus 1 percentage point. But once they turned 62, they’d go back to receiving cost-of-living adjustments pegged to the full rate of inflation. The provision wouldn’t kick in until late next year, a delay Ryan says was designed to allow the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to consider alternative proposals for reining in the military’s...

<p>The House on Tuesday passed a bill to restore pension increases for some 750,000 military retirees.</p> <p>The House voted 326 to 90 to undo cuts to cost-of-living hikes for military pensions for all current retirees and anyone who enlisted before Jan. 1. The Senate is expected to vote Wednesday.</p>

Fingers crossed. A good sign is that Assembly leaders now say they will take on the massive shortfall in the State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) that provides retirement, disability and survivor benefits for CaliforniaÂ’s 868,493 teachers and their families. Speaker John Perez says he wants to find a way to begin paying down the $80 billion unfunded liability for teacher pensions and the Assembly will hold hearing on the issue this month.While CalPERS, the other major public employee pension system, is in a weak position, CalSTRS is close to falling into the abyss. However, neither of the systems is...

Hold on to your wallets, folks. Without a powerful intervention, California may soon become the first big domino to fall in America's public pension debacle. To help prevent catastrophe, the California Public Policy Center (CPPC) has just made public a new database detailing the size and scope of the state's outsized expenditures on public employees — the largest ever compiled in California. Legislators and voters should take note, because California can't afford another round of fact-free partisan warfare. As recently reported in the New York Times, the fate of California cities such as Desert Hot Springs — where civic bankruptcy...

America has recently experienced a wave of municipal bankruptcies significantly fueled by underfunded pension and retiree health obligations to retired city workers, including policemen, firemen and teachers. The bankruptcies of Detroit and some California towns, the massive pension shortfall in Illinois only partially addressed by recent legislation, and the tense situation in Chicago with the mayor asking municipal workers for give-backs are just the beginning of difficulties that will appear across the country. Asset returns have come up short of what has been assumed. Generous unfunded retirement benefits with early retirement dates and expensive cost-of-living adjustments were doled out to...

Veterans groups are growing increasingly frustrated that Congress has not made any headway toward reversing a $6 billion cut to military pensions. The groups are determined to reverse the cut because they fear it is a first step toward larger cuts in military compensation and benefits. More than a dozen bills have been introduced in both chambers to repeal the cut, which reduces the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) by 1 percentage point below inflation for retirees younger than 62. The change would take effect in December 2015. While more than a third of lawmakers have backed one or more of...

Why trimming military pensions irks this deficit-hawk veteran. With a $1.1 trillion budget wending its way through Congress and likely headed for President Obama’s desk, officials in Washington are no doubt patting themselves on the back for a job well done. Here’s who won’t be cheering the news: American veterans and military retirees and their families. Tucked away in this massive spending package is a provision that chops away at the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) raises for military retirees and family survivors, in order to save an estimated $6 billion over the next ten years. You could argue that I,...

Congress has rushed to protect the medically retired and survivor benefit recipients from the cap on annual cost-of-living adjustments it approved only a few weeks ago for all “working age” military retirees. The quick “COLA fix,” part of a massive “omnibus” funding bill for 12 federal departments, still leaves most military retirees under age 62 with future COLAs trimmed by one percent below the annual inflation rate, an erosion of retirement value set to begin in January 2016. The fix also creates a disparity in COLA protection between separate groups of disabled retirees, critics contend. It won’t affect retirees with...

The feedback continues, with a bunch of military veterans and family members asking me how I could defend the callous COLA cuts to military pensions by way of explaining why Congress is trying to undo them. Another reader email: I strenuously object to being asked to sacrifice any more! I risked my life in two deployments to war zones, sacrificed my health (I'm also a disabled veteran), and jeopardized my relationship with my family for my country. I find Congress' latest demand a kick in the gut. We veterans and retirees have sacrificed enough without having to endure the...

Likud Beytenu MKs prepared for the possibility that Israeli citizens will be included in the next prisoner release, submitting bills to deny terrorists National Insurance Institute allowances. "This bill is meant to stop the absurd situation in which a person enjoys benefits from the country he harmed," MK David Rotem (Likud Beytenu) said Wednesday. Rotem and coalition chairman Yariv Levin (Likud Beytenu) proposed almost identical bills taking away NII pensions and unemployment payments from terrorists freed in a prisoner release deal. The bills would not allow terrorists to receive funds from the NII during the duration of their original sentence,...

Incredibly, the House GOP has just agreed that the only group deserving budget punishment in the new spending deal is the career military. It is an obscene deal, one made worse by a patently cynical attempt to hide the blow to the military by “restoring” cuts to the pensions of wounded veterans. A vote for this betrayal of the military will haunt every Republican who supports it. When the first outlines of the budget “deal” emerged late last tear, I counseled caution as the final details could change.

The $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill introduced Monday evening leaves the vast majority of pension cuts to military retirees intact, only exempting disabled veterans from the controversial provision included in last month’s budget deal. The spending bill amends a section of the bipartisan budget agreement that hit the military with reduced retirement pay, while also leaving generous benefits for civilian federal retirees untouched. The new spending bill, negotiated by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R., Ky.) and Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), would only restore retirement benefits for 17.5 percent of military retirees. Title...

<p>Last month’s congressional budget deal hit military retirees with 20 years of service or more in a very real and controversial way: It trimmed their cost-of-living adjustments [COLAs] by 1% each year until they reach 62.</p> <p>Veterans’ groups say this reduction could add up to an average of more than $80,000 in losses for retirees who are affected -- and a loss of confidence in the U.S. government’s word.</p>

Congressional Republicans have been thinking up various clever ways to replace a cut in military pensions for under-62 military retirees with various other cuts in federal expenditures. This is a mistake. As the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget explains, the cut is modest: Among the elements of the budget deal that passed Congress last month was a small $6 billion change to the way military pensions are calculated for military retirees younger than 62. In the face of lawmakers who would roll back this change, both the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal editorial boards defended the provision...

Calling the Chicago pension crisis the worst in the nation is saying something - like, how bad can it get? The city's underfunded pension system for teachers, firefighters, police, and transit workers threatens to punch a hole in the city budget that would devastate city services. The teachers' alone are $1 billion short of funds, while the city as a whole is looking at a whopping $27 billion shortfall. The state of Illinois is even worse off with more than $100 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. Where is the money going to come from to fix the problem? Financial Times:...

A global retirement crisis is bearing down on workers of all ages. How retirement systems vary, country to country Associated Press Spawned years before the Great Recession and the financial meltdown in 2008, the crisis was significantly worsened by those twin traumas. It will play out for decades, and its consequences will be far-reaching. Many people will be forced to work well past the traditional retirement age of 65 — to 70 or even longer. Living standards will fall, and poverty rates will rise for the elderly in wealthy countries that built safety nets for seniors after World War II.

As someone who is constantly researching retirement, I find the recent funding cuts to military retirees very disheartening. Worse yet, I see this as a move to establish ground zero for the testing of changes to Social Security benefits. On Wednesday, the Senate passed a bipartisan budget that scales back cost of living adjustments for working age military retirees starting in 2015. Several sources including Military.com suggests that qualified participants could lose between $3,700 and $6,200 per year, or an aggregate between $83,000 and $124,000 before they retire based on rank, age and years of service. Despite some protests, a...