We all know about the federal government’s rising debt, but Kathryn Watson of the Daily Caller urges us to consider another lingering liability.
Taxpayers are on the hook for one of the biggest government failures they’ve probably never heard of — $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities for federal retirees.
Massive unfunded pension liabilities at the local and state levels have made headlines in recent years, but rarely mentioned is the estimated $1 trillion funding gap in the world’s fourth-largest retirement system. Despite a law passed more than three decades ago requiring officials set aside sufficient funds to cover present and projected future benefits, federal personnel officials are partially subsidizing payments with transfers from the Department of Treasury instead of forcing agencies to come up with the cash on their own, according to a former U.S. Army auditor who has studied the issue closely.
“I’m looking at the taxpayers,” Tom McKinney, a retired certified internal auditor for the U.S. Army Audit Agency who writes about unfunded federal pensions for Truth in Accounting, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The taxpayers are being hosed.” Truth in Accounting is a non-profit group advocating greater transparency and accuracy in government accounting.
