CHICAGO - Democrats in control of Illinois and Chicago governments refuse to address the state employees' pension fund crisis - and on occasion, you'll hear union members quietly confess they expect taxpayers - state or federal - to bail them out, sooner or later.
Despite promising incredibly lucrative pensions with three percent annual cost-of-living-adjustments to keep union members voting Democrats into office year after year, the percent of pension funding being paid is decreasing every year. The dreaded pension crisis nationwide is nearing.
Already, the private sector Teamsters' Central States Pension Fund has notified its retired members that they will be losing their monthly pension checks in years to come because their funds were either poorly invested or misappropriated. Either way, men and women who worked for decades paying into the fund could soon lose their main income - with the threat of Social Security also becoming insolvent.
The Teamsters are sending their members notices to lobby the US Congress to bail the union pension fund out of its disaster. But those calls are being met by a resistant group of taxpayers already focused on their own retirement savings accounts.
The situation is foreboding. The state of Illinois is billions of dollars behind in paying into its promised pension funds - some figures show government employee pension accounts only 17% funded.
According to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey nationwide, 53% of likely US Voters oppose a taxpayer bailout of underfunded union pension funds. Only 26^ support a pension bailout. A sizable 21% are undecided.
And even while Democrats are the overwhelming supporters of the union bailout legislation which has already passed the House of Representatives, only 36% of Democratic voters favor it. But that compares to just 17% of Republicans and 22% of voters not affiliated with either major party.
Fifty-five percent (55%) of all voters have a favorable opinion of labors unions, a finding that has ranged from 44% to 58% in surveys since 2006. Thirty-five percent (35%) view unions unfavorably. This includes 21% with a Very Favorable opinion and 13% with a Very Unfavorable one.
