A "Date with Destiny" or Another Opportunity to Kick the Can Down the Road?

So, Governor Quinn has called a special session of the Illinois General Assembly and set a vote on pension reform for August 17th.  Governor Quinn has called this a "date with destiny" (see here).  Depending on whose figures you believe, Illinois has anywhere from an $83 billion to $203 billion unfunded pension liability (see here).  It is getting to the point where Illinois will soon be spending more on pensions than on education (see here).  Increasingly, pension payments are "crowding out" spending on other state services (see here).  This fiscal calamity that is staring the Governor and the General Assembly in the face, however, may not be enough (at least, not yet) to prod politicians to actually do anything about pension reform, however.  The politicians already seem to be lining up their excuses for kicking the can down the road one more time (see here).  Unfortunately, every time that Illinois politicians kick the can further down the road, the problem continues to grow, and the pain necessary to alleviate the problem (including the pain for those who depend on state pensions) continues to grow.  Not only does the unfunded liability continue to grow, but the cost of financing state deficits will grow as bond rating agencies downgrade Illinois debt (see here).

You may not be able to depend on Illinois politicians to tackle the problem of pension reform any time soon, but you can depend on at least one thing in this mess: pension liabilities that are not sustainable (and every rational person on both sides of the aisle from the Governor's office to the General Assembly agrees that the pension liabilities are not sustainable) will not be paid in full.  Kicking the can down the road does not help anyone (except maybe the politicians, who seem to care only about their next election).  It does not help the taxpayers, who can only look forward to their taxes being raised yet again.  It certainly does not help the people that depend on the pension liabilities being paid, who may wake up one day to only to find out that the pension they relied upon is being cut drastically (one town in Alabama stopped paying pensions entirely, see here).  And it most certainly does not help the younger public sector workers (teachers, firefighters, policemen, etc.) whose positions are being cut because pension obligations are taking a larger and larger share of state and local budgets (see here).