Pension a teacher’s sole security

If your boss balanced his budget by not paying your Social Security pension benefits, your boss would be fined, shut down or in jail. When the Illinois legislature did not pay my pension benefits they called it a “pension holiday” and got re-elected and praised for balancing the budget.

Illinois teachers do not receive Social Security. They pay into their pension fund instead. Currently, the TRS rate is more than 10 percent. The only reason some teachers earn more in their pensions than Social Security recipients do is because they paid at a higher rate.

If a retired teacher’s spouse should die, the teacher does not even collect his or her late spouse’s Social Security. If teachers earn Social Security credits doing other jobs, they are only entitled to about 25 percent of the benefits they earned. It is unbelievable.

The organizations lobbying to convince legislators that public employees don’t deserve their pensions work for Wall Street corporations that have already stolen your private pensions in 401(k)s. They are multimillionaires who claim they Stand For Children when in fact they stand for greed.

Past pension holidays mean that the vast majority of money in the Illinois Teachers Retirement System is money that teachers earned and contributed.

My pension = your Social Security. We must protect them both.

Shirley Forpe

Retired teacher

Palatine