My inspiration for starting this blog two years ago came from my earlier review of the sloppy work done by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs when they were leading the charge to eliminate all of Oklahoma’s public employee pensions so I like to update how the largest plan, Oklahoma Teachers Retirement, is doing from time to time. Last year I wrote in opposition to efforts by legislators to greatly diminish the benefits for new teachers as a cynical way to push them into less efficient individual retirement accounts. Fortunately, that effort failed and was not revived this year.
The pleasant reality is that recent changes to OTRS have placed it on a clear path to being mostly, if not fully, funded by 2034. That is in dramatic contrast to the federal Social Security retirement plan which the recently released 2017 Trustees’ report projects will exhaust its trust fund resulting in reduced benefit payments as early as 2034. In recognition of this dramatic divergence of the two pensions I am grateful to receive, I wrote a post that was picked up by the online newspaper NonDoc.com which you can read here.
This is something Oklahomans can be proud of and teachers thankful for—our legislature has set in place a combination of benefits moderation, namely making it difficult for unfunded COLA’s to be approved, and dedicated funding supplements, namely 5% of some major revenue sources, that assure the state will keep its promises to current retirees and teachers and maintain a competitive retirement plan that will help recruit and retain teachers in the future. This is worth both thanking legislators and encouraging them to stay the course.
By contrast Oklahoma’s Congressional delegation, led by supposed fiscal conservative James Inhofe, have known as long as each have been in office that Social Security is on a collision course that, the longer ignored, will inflict much pain on either or both of workers who will be asked to pay more and retirees who will see benefits slashed. There have been several “commissions”, dating back to 1981, that have made thoughtful recommendations, always advising that acting sooner than later will lessen the pain. Yet Inhofe and the rest have managed to do nothing about this greatest fiscal challenge facing our nation.
So I conclude: It was the best of pensions, it was the worst of pensions, it was born in the age of wisdom, it was buried in the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, our grandchildren had nothing before them, we were all going to retire happily, we were all going to work till we die – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities (think Inhofe) insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of hypocrisy only.
As always lunch is on me for the first to ID the photo (a bust of FDR whose vision brought financial security to millions in their old age) location.