Steve King Attacks Public Pensions But Defends His Own Cushy One As ‘Not That Great’ And ‘Slim Pickins’ One of the right-wing’s successful but false memes is that public workers are lavishly overpaid and that this justifies cutting their middle class wages, benefits, pensions, and labor rights. This attack on public workers has spawned a Main Street Movement of middle class Americans determined to stand up for economic justice.
During an appearance on C-Span earlier this week, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) continued this line of attack on public worker pensions. Yet at one point, the C-Span host pointed to a Washington Post article that rightly noted that Congress’s own pension plans are “hefty” and allow lawmakers to “retire with generous benefits packages.” When the host asked King what he thought about that, the congressman laughed off the question and said that his own pension is “slim pickins”:
HOST: Here’s a story in today’s Washington post, coming to us from the McClatchy Tribune Services, with pension plans under attack, congress’s own benefits are hefty, lawmakers can retire with generous packages with less buy-in.
KING: The response for that I guess is what you’re wondering. Um, you know, the packages we have today are not the packages that many people think we have. I believe it’s five years to be vested in a retirement plan at all. The federal employees who make a career out of this their plan is one that accumulates over their working career of their lifetime, the average time here in congress as I recall I have to go back to check this, is about 10.8 years. <...> The pension plan for the average member of Congress is not that great <…> If I were going to retire off of what’s here, it would be a pretty slim pickins.
Watch it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/18/steve-king-public-pensions/
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