Identical health care, retirement and work benefits for Americans and Members of Congress. Misery LOVES company and IF Americans must do without, then so should Members of Congress. NO pay raise, EXTREME elimination of employment benefits, such as pensions, health care coverage/increase in premium costs for employees...
The following article was published in 2001:
July 11, 2001
WASHINGTON – Unlike most American workers, who lost big money in their 401(k) retirement accounts last year, members of Congress can't lose in their gold-plated retirement plans.
Congress' bloated pensions
are by far the single biggest perk offered lawmakers, a huge incentive for incumbents to cling to office and spend more of your money.
Cushy doesn't begin to describe their retirement plans. They are more like small lotteries.
As with private plans, politicians' retirement benefits rise with length of service. But congressional pensions provide double to triple the benefits offered by most private employers, studies show.
In fact, they are so generous that some former lawmakers' annual pensions are twice as high as their pre-retirement congressional salary. Among the major provisions:
# Payout is based on a special formula. Most companies base pensions on the average of an employee's five highest-paid years, plus 1.5 percent. But lawmakers get the average of their highest three years' pay – inflating the total by giving more weight to peak years – plus as much as 2.5 percent.
# Congressional pension payments rise each year under a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA. Virtually no companies offer pensions that match a rise in the Consumer Price Index.
# Both lawmakers and staffers can retire with a full, guaranteed pension at age 50 after 20 years of service, whereas most American workers must wait until they are 65.
Hold on for 20 years and you can retire with a full pension as early as age 50 and live the rest of your life in relative luxury – at taxpayers' expense. And that does not include your tax-deferred savings plan, which taxpayers match nearly dollar-for-dollar, or Social Security benefits (like all workers, members of Congress pay into the system on the first $80,400 of their gross income).
Many members who have recently left Congress will draw more than $1 million over their lifetimes. Some are expected to haul in more than $2 million, projects the National Taxpayers Union.
Voters may have put some old tax-and-spend bulls out to pasture in recent years. But that doesn't mean they stopped paying for their long and dubious service.
Take former House Speaker Tom Foley, D-Wash. He's collecting $123,804 a year, plus COLAs, for his 32 years of government service.
Then there's retired crook Dan Rostenkowski. After 36 years in the House, benefits for the former Ways and Means Committee chairman start at $96,462 a year, even though he was convicted of embezzling his office stamp allowance. (Only treason can strip federal lawmakers of their pension.)
For the roughly 85 percent of Americans working in the private sector, retirement won't be so golden.
Fewer than four out of 10 workers even have a pension, guaranteed or not. And the average worker with a pension qualifies for about a third of his or her pay, or about $7,500 a year – and that's fixed for life.
Just bringing congressional members' pensions in line with private pensions would save taxpayers some $100 million a year, Money magazine estimated not too long ago.
www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=9971
EIGHT YEARS LATER AND THIS IS WHAT AMERICANS ARE CURRENTLY FACING --Pensions: The Next Casualty of Wall StreetSeptember 26, 2009
Nobody wants to admit it, but the next casualty of the Wall Street meltdown will probably be your golden years. For years corporations have been trying to choke the life out of traditional pensions, working hard to get out from under the risk—and the cost—of providing for their retirees. Between last year’s credit crunch and changes to federal pension laws, they may get their wish.
Nearly $4 trillion worth of retirement savings were wiped out in the first weeks of the 2008 financial freefall. Half of the drop was concentrated in traditional pension plans, also known as defined-benefit plans. While most workers in these plans haven’t had their monthly benefits cut, unlike the 46 million people riding the stock market with 401(k) defined-contribution plans, the storm clouds are gathering.
Labor needs a strategy to protect what we’ve won. But holding our ground requires moving from defense to offense. If the pension crisis is going to be solved for union members, it has to be solved for everyone.
labornotes.org/node/2466
