No need to touch the pensions. There is absolutely no reason for a guy who was promised a pension in exchange for work should lose any pensions. Any change to pensions should be made for the guy starting work the following day. In fact, the company who gave a pension should take care of people on pensions before stock holders in my opinion and I have stocks and still want the workers to be taken care of first. Our companies have gone nuts and totally screwing the workers and it must stop. It has been that way since the 80s.
I have to disagree with you when it comes to public sector unions.
If some former politicians promised our tax dollars for votes in the form of over-generous pensions, the taxpayer should have some form of recourse to see that those pensions are adjusted according to the ability of the government to pay, without further pillaging from the taxpayer.
Spoken like a government-employee union-goon collecting $100,000 a year in pension and benefits.
Those pensions were contracts agreed to by people who, on both sides, were going to get taxpayer-paid, non-funded pensions, meaning they will be coming straight from tax revenue. The taxpayers were not involved in the agreement. The taxpayers did not agree to fund them, you agreed among yourselves that the taxpayers should fund them.
Even that Commie SOB Franklin Delano Roosevelt was against public-sector unions and their pensions.
Those pensions are going away someday, like most of the financial fraud being perpetrated. Look up geometric expansion. That's what's going to happen to your pension. The promises are going to far exceed what is even possible to come up with.
You can cheat the taxpayers, but you can't cheat the math.