Don’t Let Them Treat Pensions Like a Force of Nature

Ted Nesi captured a broader point with this item from his weekend Nesi’s Notes column:

[Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien] pushed back at House GOP Leader Patricia Morgan’s argument that cities and towns should have to find savings to cover part of the $220 million tab to eliminate the tax. “That’s old-school thinking, that we haven’t done a lot of those things,” Grebien argued. His office points out that 94% of the growth in Pawtucket’s city-side budget over the last decade, about $12.4 million total, has gone to cover retiree benefits – leaving just $825,000 more to spend on everything else.

One must chuckle at a politician trying to act as if the state and municipalities have done all of the possible belt tightening and looking for more is “old-school thinking.”  Anybody who falls for that line deserves to continue to have his or her bank account raided by the looters.

But the bigger notion worth highlighting is that retiree benefits are some sort of natural occurrence that ought to be excluded from our conversations about budgets.  Robert Walsh, of the National Education Association of Rhode Island, attempted something similar during his appearance on Rhode Island Public Radio’s Political Roundtable Q&A when he tried to make it seem as if Rhode Island spends a great deal less on education than Massachusetts because of the different ways pensions are funded in the two states.

This is an old non-truth that I exposed in 2015, but my point here isn’t that Walsh’s statement was wrong (and he probably knows it).  Rather the point is that pensions are a part of our government spending — demanded by unions and supplied by politicians.

Of course, insiders want to act like all of their spending habits are off the table, but we should rebuff them when they try.  If you want more spending change your pension benefits.  The way actuaries figure out what governments owe means that lowering the promises being made now affect the funding required now.  We still won’t be able to afford it in the long term, but at least other priorities would have some space for now.

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