[dragnet2]

Taxpayers for years have been covering private contractors' retiree costs for things like pensions and health care, even though these workers are not on the federal payroll.

The private sector is being gang raped by government.

[businessprofessor]

“The private sector is being gang raped by government.”

Except for the private sector in bed with the government. This practice is most likely related to labor cartels. I smell another labor cartel fleecing of taxpayers.

Government accounting is either absent or deliberately deceptive. The corruption never ends.

[worst-case scenario]

How do you get that conclusion from the statement you quoted? It says that the *taxpayers* are picking up the tab for the *contractors’ pensions and benefits. There are a lot of private sector workers who wouldn’t mind getting “gang raped” with some benefits and pensions, themselves.

[R W Reactionairy]

"The private sector is being gang raped by government."

Not really and not so much any more as defined benefit plans are being phased out. It's more complicated than this, but in a brief, when the Government enters into a cost type contract they sign up to pay the benefits in place at the company.

These benefits at larger companies used to almost always include defined benefits for pensions. You work so many years at such a salary and by formula you get $X dollars per month when you retire. The cost the Government pays is based on what additional benefit the employee earns that year plus a factor to account for the difference between the assumption made [asset returns on the pension trusts, life expectancy, turnover and others.]

Until recently, because the asset returns were higher than expected costs were lower and the Government paid little in the current year and the surplus was expected by the model to pay future cost.

Then the asset returns headed south, and retirees continued to live a little longer than expected.

Usually these continuing costs get paid by the next contract, but payments are mostly from the trust where the amounts were funded in the past.

However, there are also contract terms that specify that if a contractor stops contracting with the Government, that there be a final settlement. The Government was very big on this when pension surpluses common and changed the terms of contracts in 1995 to have this settlement apply to fixed price as well as cost type contract history.

There goes your tax dollars, but there is nothing nefarious about it. Just contracts and the attempt to have a final settlement of costs.