Blame politicians for pension debacle

Illinois’ public employees are being made to look like the bad guys in this whole pension debacle. Public employees have done everything right all the time. Every single public employee has paid into the retirement system from every single paycheck they have ever earned.

The entire problem is due to the state not contributing its promised fair share into the system. Many of the politicians now calling for reform are the same politicians who diverted funds away from the pension system and to their gigantic corporate sponsors in the form of massive tax cuts. And, what do the giant corporations do in return? They terminate jobs in Illinois and send them overseas.

So now some people want to penalize public employees for doing everything right and reward politicians (who’ve done everything wrong) with a budget break. Absolutely insane. We’ve had some terrible leadership in Illinois over the last couple of decades. It’s time to call these politicians out and make them do the job they were elected to do. If we don’t, the corruption and mismanagement of the state will only get much worse. Every single middle- and lower-class citizen should be disgusted by the politicians calling for pension reform.

If there were pension reform, does anybody really believe that the extra dollars would go toward helping the middle- and lower-class citizens of Illinois? Dream on! We would have a rerun of the last 10 years with the money being diverted away from the lower and middle class.

How could any middle or lower class person want to ruin the promised and well-earned pensions of thousands of Illinois state troopers so that a bunch of politicians and corporate CEOs can buy their third or fourth vacation homes? Mind-boggling.

John A. Kazuk

Mount Prospect