Pension savings plan just another scheme

You printed a letter on July 14 from a state senator touting and explaining a bill now working its way through Springfield. The bill would require certain employees to make contributions to a pension fund run by the state. What could possibly go wrong with this?

Let me say first that I reject the very idea of the state requiring anybody to do anything anymore than absolutely necessary, even if it's for their own good. But the bigger issue here is that all kinds of money will be coming to the state, supposedly to be set aside in investments for the future for a lot of people. I am not saying that the author of this bill is planning this, but I have no doubt that the state will use this money to pay bills and contribute to its pension fund by having this fund invest in state bonds in return for the cold cash.

I have no doubt that this will become another pay-as-you-go plan in which future enrollees will be funding the past ones, because all the money in the fund will have been long spent. People will be forced to put money into a retirement plan that will end up being as unfunded as our state pension funds. This is just another scheme to get more money for the state, which they will waste like they did all the money they got before this.

Larry Craig

Wilmette