Reis: “Pension Raid a Sad Day for Illinois”

May 30, 2005

Springfield…. Describing it as a ‘very sad day for the State of Illinois’ State Representative David Reis (R-Ste. Marie) said after Sunday’s vote in the Illinois House of Representatives on SB27 Illinois will have the ‘worst funded pension system in the country.’

Both the Illinois House and Senate narrowly approved a Democrat sponsored bill to divert more than $2.3 billion from state pensions over the next two years so it can be used instead to finance other state programs.

Reis said “Illinois’ pension system is already the 49th worst funded system in America. After this vote we will be the undisputed #1 both in terms of dollars and percentage versus assets. We are going to short the system between $3 billion and $4 billion over the next four years. And it will be our children and grandchildren who are going to pay for this.”

The 108th District State Representative added that Democrats argued Republican administrations have done the same thing in the past. “That was only done to pay off current debts,” said Reis “not to fund increased spending, to bail out the CTA in Chicago, and to give $200 million in ‘pork projects’ to Democrats who were going to vote ‘no’ to vote in favor of it. This is just raiding the pension fund to pay for increased spending.”

Reis said history has proven how this number accrues over the years. “If they short the system this much now,” said Reis, “they are going to have sell assets that aren’t going to be there to accrue interest or compound interest over the next 20 or 30 years. And when we have to pay that money out to future employees it’s going to be the same as a $50 billion hole in our pension system.”

Reis added that several of the downstate Democrats who voted for this bill are going to have to go home to their district and explain to their teachers, state workers and prison workers, why they didn’t fund their pension plan this year.

“This is a huge mistake,” Reis said “and the state of Illinois is going to pay for this for a long, long time.”