Austin American-Statesman Continues Coverage of Pension Issue

By virtue of its location in the state’s capitol, the Austin American-Statesman has been doing great work on covering issues that would affect all public sector employees in Texas. We greatly appreciate their interest in these issues.

To wit, the AAS editors last week accepted and ran an opinion piece I wrote addressing points made in a Wall Street Journal article that advocated for requiring public employees to abandon defined benefit plans for defined contribution plans.

As I note in my article, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that defined contribution plans aren’t doing what they should to increase employees’ retirement wealth. It’s my hope that a shared public policy goal would be reducing the amount of public funding needed by people once they retire.

We could do this by working to ensure that sound retirement plans are in place for all workers, regardless of whether they are in private or sector employment. Right now that would require making changes to regulations for defined benefit plans in the private sector to create an incentive for business to provide meaningful retirement benefits for their employees. – Max Patterson