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Republicans, stop trying to ‘fix’ IPERS!

It has been announced that our current Republican-led legislators are going to take on the monstrously challenging job of “fixing” IPERS. We retirees, who paid into IPERS during our working lives, couldn’t be happier because this same group of legislators are the ones who took the state’s millions in surplus money and managed to turn it into a deficit so severe that the state struggles to pay income tax refunds. Their financial acumen is nothing short of amazing — amazingly deficient.

Another consideration is that IPERS does not need to be fixed. It has been very healthy for 30 years. It has averaged an annual return rate of 8.83 percent above the 7.5 percent that was the assumed rate of growth. It is “secure, strong, and sustainable.”

However, we realize our Republican legislators are Koch bought and ALEC taught, so they must seize this wonderful opportunity to privatize our pensions — thus fulfilling the Koch dream of giving our tax money to corporations. We can all bear witness to how well their privatizing of Medicaid has worked. The only dissatisfied parties are those needing Medicaid, providers, and the corporations now handling Medicaid because they are not making big enough profits. However, these corporations need not fret because if their profits aren’t high enough, they ask and they receive even more of our tax money to keep those profits rolling in.

With this Republican/Koch financial report card — why would any of us worry about the safety of our pensions that they will “fix?’ We might just possibly worry because their definition of “fix” is any way they can make IPERS as successful as they made Medicaid.

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