...Over time, elected officials came to promise workers politically popular new benefits without setting aside the money to pay for them, declared "holidays" from contributions into pension systems and changed their own accounting systems midstream to make the systems seem better funded — all just ways of passing obligations on to future taxpayers.
In the process, government pension systems became one of the chief vehicles that state and local politicians used to massage their budgets.
Now we face the consequences.Our elected representatives played a deceptive game of chicken with pension funds.
And now the chickens have come home to roost.
Years of gimmicks and politically motivated benefit increases for government workers have left America's states and municipalities with pension funds that are short at least $1.5 trillion — and possibly as much as $4 trillion if the investment returns of these funds don't live up to expectations in coming years.
Just so the word "trillion" does not pass by too quickly, let's put it another way:
That shortfall may be $4,000,000,000,000...."
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