Walker deserves the Costanza response on pensions

Looks like Gov. Walker is starting to hear the concerns that he's going to try to steal the state's fully-funded public worker pensions in order to balance his deficit-ridden state budget. On Friday, he had his cabinet secretaries release an email to employees trying to convince people that the pensions would not be touched. My notes are in bold and parentheses.

Questions have been raised by some of our employees regarding a study currently underway to review the structure and benefits of the Wisconsin Retirement System (WRS). Gee why would they think that? Because the employees aren't stupid and know Walker will screw them in a heartbeat. The Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds (ETF) prepared a brief memo, which provides a technical summary of the details of the study. Please click here to read the memo. The memo basically says the state is working on a study which will be released by June 30, and that one of the options is to turn the system from its current defined-benefit approach to allowing employees to "opt-out" and take part in a 401K-type of system. If that doesn't freak you out, given what we've seen out of the stock market the last 12 years, it needs to.

I would like to emphasize the following points:

§ WRS is a healthy, fully-funded system.

§ Wisconsin law does not allow elected officials to modify already-earned benefits. And 2 years ago public employees had collective bargaining right guaranteed. They can always be changed through legislation. In addition, Governor Walker has repeatedly expressed he has no intention, nor does he have the authority, to change already-earned benefits for current state employees. what about future benefits?

§ By providing policy-makers and agency staff with new research, this study will contribute to the strength of the WRS, by ensuring that the state continues to support retirement security for public employees across Wisconsin at a reasonable cost. i.e- we're trying to cut what we pay into the system for our employees even more and leave you out on your own when it comes to getting benefits.

§ We have a responsibility to study options to safeguard the long-term sustainability of the fund for the future of Wisconsin public employees. And help our pro-Wall Street campaign contributors by giving them more fresh meat for customers.

You really need to take a tip from the George Costanza School of Decision-making when you see Walker officials discussing matters. Take what Walker says, believe the complete opposite, and you'll probably be right. Look at the history:

1. The revealing of Act 10: "We're broke and have nothing to offer." Turned out that the state had a budget surplus on the way, not a deficit, and that union officials told them they would accept Walker's increased health care and pension contributions in exchange for keeping bargaining rights, and Walker turned them down.

2. Walker and paid hacks like Christian Schneider of WPRI like to claims Walker's "tools" have allowed schools to function the same despite hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to K-12 education. This simply is not true, as the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators said that the vast majority of school districts have lost staff and cut classes, because the "tools" did not coome close to making up for the budget cuts, even in schools that could use them. And the 2012-2013 year looks even more dire than last year.

3. Walker and his supporters are still claiming that the Wisconsin budget is balanced with no tax increases. First of all, we're $208 million in deficit (and would be $233 in million if Walker wasn't stealing money from the mortgage settlement), so strike 1, but strike 2 is that Walker's budget included more than $112 million in added fees, including huge tuition increases for UW System schools.

4. Walker actively complained about Jim Doyle's habit of using surplus funds in one area of the budget to pay for another, including a promise not to use Transportation Fund money to pay for General Fund shortfalls. Except Walker used numerous fund raids in his budget, including $160 million sent away from the General Fund and into the Transportation Fund as a kickback from his Road Builder buddies. Even Republi-fact admitted that Walker broke his promise, and also included moves such as environmental cleanup fees going into the Road Building fund instead of being used for environmental protection.

So when the Walker folks claim that they are not going to mess with employees pensions, you need to use the Costanza rule, and realize that they are absolutely going after the pensions if they get to put together another budget next year. Let's not allow that happen.