Sen. Brady targets state pensions in campaign for governor

 

 

Forget about reducing benefits, raising employee contributions, extending the age requirement for full retirement and other recently popular methods of attacking retirement security for public employees, state Sen. Bill Brady wants to eliminate state pensions altogether.

 

In a speech to the City Club, a group of wealthy Chicagoans, Brady, the Republic candidate for governor in the fall, continued to tout his vague and unrealistic plan to balance the Illinois budget by making unspecified cuts and, incredibly, cutting the estate tax and making other tax CUTS.

 

When he turned to details, Brady argued that state workers should be put into 401(k)-style retirement programs that would be paid for entirely by employee contributions, with no state contribution.

 

Brady said his plan would apply to new hires. The current pension programs would remain in place for people who already belong to them. So that would do nothing to reduce the state’s $78-billion unfunded liability for current employees’ pensions.

 

And it would rob the pension systems of contributions from new hires – contributions that help support the systems.

 

“Every study has shown that defined-benefit plans are more efficient and less costly in delivering the same benefit,” Council 31 public affairs director Anders Lindall told the State Journal-Register. “I find it difficult to believe that Sen. Brady has fully thought out his proposal.”

 

Click here for the full Journal-Register article, in which Ralph Martire, executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, called Brady’s plan “idiotic on every level.”