Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Bob Stannard, a lobbyist and author.
I was going to write a tribute column to my friend, Iverson Minter, a.k.a. Louisiana Red, who passed away yesterday afternoon at a hospital in Germany. Red was one of the last remaining, old-school blues players. His mother died when he was 5 and his father was hung by the KKK. He had a hard life and every note the man played and every word he sang reflected the times in which he lived and the day-to-day struggles he was able to overcome. Louisiana Red was truly a great man.
Soon after learning of Red’s passing, I read the New York Times to see the news of the day. I read a story about Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The title of the story was, “Perry’s Working Retirement Sheds Light on a Perk.”
What in blazes is a “working retirement”? I always thought you worked, got paid, retired and hopefully had some sort of pension and/or lived off your savings. I had never heard of a working retirement.
Well, folks, only in Texas would we expect to find such a thing. From the Times: “An obscure 1991 provision dealing with state pension benefits was only a few paragraphs long, and it escaped public notice at the time. Even the lawmakers who passed it said they did not know what the fine print accomplished until it became law.”
Nice to see those good politicians in Texas were paying attention in ’91. As a result of the legislature being asleep on the job, Gov. Perry has been able to increase his take-home pay by more than $90,000 while serving as governor of Texas. This is in addition to his salary of $150,000. No one would have ever known about this sweetheart deal had Perry not run for president. Doing so caused him to have to report any and all revenues.
Understand that the $90,000 is his retirement, but this clever little law, instituted by Democrats no less, allows him to begin collecting his retirement even though he’s still working.
This is obnoxious enough on the face of it, but to make matters worse, Gov. Perry’s cornerstone issue during his brief run in the Republican presidential primary was the elimination of perks that members of Congress now receive. We can be assured that this would have been one of the first things President Perry would have tackled upon his arrival in Washington.
What is it with these guys? Republicans have made a pretty big deal out of our deficit spending and the amount of money we waste, which on one level is not a bad thing. We need to be reminded that we’re spending more than we’re taking in and we need to reverse that trend by doing one, or both, of the following: spend less – take in more money.
Guys like Gov. Perry want to spend less. They think that we just have to cut spending on Medicare and Social Security. On the other hand, they balk at cutting military spending and ending corporate welfare. There is a movement afoot to castrate the middle class and undermine any effort that would support American workers.
That’s fine. That’s what we’ve come to expect from those who want the taxpayer dollars all to themselves while depriving the average American of any benefits such as a national health care program that would keep people from losing everything in the last few months of their life. The Republicans in charge of the party today think that we should all be independent and self-sufficient. Rest assured, many of us would like to be, but it’s hard when you’ve worked all your life only to watch the money you’ve saved and invested be swept away overnight, because a handful of greedy bankers couldn’t ever make enough money.
Worldwide we are seeing the international banking community putting pressure on countries like Greece and Spain to adopt austerity measures. These people just have to tighten their belts and that’s all there is to it.
While we’re asking people to sacrifice is it too much to ask that those doing the asking sacrifice a little too? Currently, a member of Congress serving only five years is vested in an elite pension plan, which can pay out as much as $84,000 per year upon retirement.
The question is why is there a retirement plan for those in public service? The job is “public service.” It was never supposed to be a job. If you choose to run for office and get elected then good for you, but it’s not a job and it shouldn’t come with a retirement plan. All that does is encourage the officeholder to remain in office. That’s not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.
It was an eye-opener to learn that the hypocrite of all hypocrites, Gov. Rick Perry, will be taking hard-earned, taxpayer dollars for his retirement while he’s still working.
If we are sincere in our goals of cutting waste then the first place we should start is special perks for elected officials. Gov. Perry couldn’t hold a candle to Louisiana Red, a man who never did have a pension.
