During my four years as treasurer, we restructured our pension system, cutting the state's unfunded liability almost by half and putting our retirement system on stronger footing.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We can't reform mandatory spending in this area until we first deal with ours. I tell my colleagues, 'Let's get the moral high ground and demonstrate that we want to make changes to our pension, and then we can deal with the big problems.'
They said it was impossible to touch the third rail of politics, to take on public-sector unions and to reform a pension and health benefits system that was headed to bankruptcy. But with bipartisan leadership, we saved taxpayers $132 billion dollars over 30 years and saved retirees their pensions. We did it.
I have this cozy house here and I get three pensions from the States. I've done nicely.
I spent a lot of time writing about tax and pensions and mortgages.
In the state of Michigan, where I served in the state Legislature, there was a lot of shuffling of money between one year and the other to balance the budget.
I'm the treasurer of the state of Ohio, where, when the United States credit rating was downgraded for the first time in American history, and 14 government funds around the country were downgraded, we earned the highest rating we could earn on our $4 billion investment fund.
Our overriding goal in restructuring our financial architecture should be that taxpayers never again have to save a failing financial institution.
I am in favor of reducing all budget items. But the item I don't want to reduce is the pension expenditure because it affects the weakest part of society.
Pension reform can be hard to talk about. In the long run, reform now means fewer demands for layoffs and less draconian measures in the future. It's in the best interest of all Californians to fix this system now.
I am a governor who left office with a smaller general fund budget than when we started.
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