Public Pension Fixes Can Fill Gaps and Avoid a Big Ruckus

The hullabaloo over cutting public employee retirement benefits and collective bargaining rights has died down, but the pension funding crisis hasn’t. It has gotten worse.

Experts disagree over the numbers, but Joshua Rauh, a Northwestern University finance professor, calculates that public pensions may be underfunded by $4.4 trillion, up from $3.1 trillion in 2009. Bloomberg Rankings data show that states are also falling behind on retiree health care: Of the $627 billion they are projected to owe, almost 96 percent isn’t financed, up from 95 percent in 2009.