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America's Other Looming Bill: Unfunded Government Pensions May 06
Standard & Poors, May 2006
Abstract
The large unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government's Social Security and Medicare systems receive a great deal of public attention. This scrutiny is warranted. However, it has diverted attention away from a separate issue: the government's growing unfunded pension liabilities for its civilian and military employees. At the federal level, the unfunded portion of these liabilities is almost the size of the national debt (see table 1). At the state level, they exceed debt for 30 of the 50 states (see table 2). Although the unfunded general government (i.e., federal plus state level) pension burden is not expected to rise as rapidly as the current projected trajectory for Medicare expenses, the pension shortfall reduces the government's fiscal flexibility over time....
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