Quote of the Day

On July 1, California’s Assembly Appropriations Committee advanced AB 1383, a bill that guts the pension reform Sacramento passed in 2013 to keep its own promises honest. It would drop the public safety retirement age from 57 to 55, invent a new 3%-at-55 benefit formula, and let cities bargain away the cost-sharing rules that reform required. CalPERS already carries more than $179 billion in unfunded liabilities. California’s total state and local pension debt tops $200 billion. Sacramento’s answer, apparently, is to promise more.

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Congress has already written one pension bailout check. In 2021, it authorized $97 billion in Special Financial Assistance to prop up failing multiemployer union pension plans, and even that money did not close the gap. Roughly $745 billion in unfunded multiemployer promises remain today. State and local public pensions carry nearly $1.27 trillion in unfunded liabilities nationwide, according to the Equable Institute’s most recent accounting, more than 15 times the multiemployer shortfall Congress already covered.

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Sacramento just showed Washington what happens without a floor. The next state to test Congress’s resolve will not file a request. It will simply run out of cash and dare anyone in Washington to watch retirees lose their checks on television.

Jay Rogers
July 23, 2026
California doubles down on pension debt — and dares Congress to bail it out

Either these politicians do not understand numbers, and/or they are deliberately trying to destroy the country and/or the country. It is not difficult to make the case it is deliberate.