Progressive State Network, responding to a report last week by the Pew Center that state pensions are at least $1 trillion in the hole, issued a report Friday claiming there is no reason to be alarmed because all states and municipalities have to do is raise taxes.

Finally, somebody said it: “The T Word.” That’s the euphemism for taxes, friends and neighbors. Those who govern us are getting ready to stick it to us again.

 

Now is the time for Americans to stick back, fast and hard.

 

Hank Scheff, director of research and employee benefits for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 31 in bankrupt Illinois, uttered “the T Word” Friday during a Progressive States Network attempt to rebut The Trillion Dollar Gap report Feb. 19 by Pew Charitable Trusts.

 

That optimistic report detailed a minimum $1 trillion in false retirement promises politicians and union leaders have made to public employees.

 

The PSN response, No Crisis in Public Retirement Systems, said, “It's unfortunate that a report last week from the Pew Center on the States added to right-wing doomsaying about state retirement systems with its alarmist title ….”

 

According to Scheff, there is no reason for alarm because the solution is simple: Increase taxes.

 

“We can’t dodge the root cause,” he said at the end of the PSN Web conference. “The ‘T Word.’ Most of the [pension] funds in Illinois are headed for bankruptcy. The root cause is our antiquated revenue structure.

 

“You [taxpayers] already owe for services rendered. It’s a tough question, but it must be faced,” Scheff said.

 

Ok. Tough questions deserve tough answers: Forget it!

 

Taxpayers did not betray public workers. Politicians and six-figure union leaders did.

 

Taxpayers did not pull the accounting tricks, hidden debts, deferred expenses and reckless overspending that put virtually every state on the edge of default.

 

Taxpayers are not the not the enemy of rank and file public workers. In fact we share a common enemy: The leaders who lied and cheated to get us into this mess.

 

Public workers who do the hard, dangerous, dirty work should check the billions of dollars shaved off their pension funds by brokers, investment advisors and placement agents. Look into your pension boards’ travel and operating expenses.

 

Workers should ask the handful of elite politicians and union chiefs why they get hundreds of millions of dollars in retirement benefits while those who do the real work average about $20,000 a year.

 

Dedicated public employees and beleaguered taxpayers have an absolute right to demand that those who made fortunes mismanaging – looting? – retirement funds pay up first, just as we want those on Wall Street who sucker punched the world economy to pay.

 

Donald J. Boyd of the Rockefeller Institute of Government studied private, state and local government employment during past recessions and this one through July, and found the vicissitudes of a crashing economy are not shared equally by those who have the power to tax.

 

Those who pay taxes but are not paid with taxes bear the brunt. We are beyond being sick of it. We are at the point that every tax dollar squeezed from the decimated third of Americans who pay for the other two thirds will intensify our nation’s economic decline. Guess what? Unemployed taxpayers cannot pay. A tax dollar squeezed from business cannot create jobs.

 

Those who produce the wealth that everyone else from Wall Street to city hall passes around are an endangered species.

 

According to a National Employment Report released Wednesday by ADP, in February private employment in the service-providing sector increased by 17,000, the second consecutive monthly increase. However, this employment growth was not enough to offset continued losses in the goods-producing sector. Employment in the goods-producing sector declined 37,000, with employment in the manufacturing sector increasing by 3,000. The employment increase in the manufacturing sector was the first since January of 2008."

 

That is one month of a tiny bit of good news, considering ADP revised the December 2009 to January private job loss to 60,000. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data are due out Friday.

 

Any way you slice it, it’s been real bad for the goods producers for a decade.

 

Since 2000, total private sector employment dropped about 3 million, 3 percent, as population increased 9.7 percent.

 

But “goods-producing” workers declined by almost 27 percent, or 6.5 million jobs. Worse, manufacturing jobs were 5.7 million of that loss, a 33 percent decline.

 

In one devastating decade private payroll dropped from 40 percent of total U.S. population to 35 percent; goods producers from almost 9 percent to less than 6 percent, and worst of all, the 6 percent of all Americans who were manufacturing workers in 2000 fell to only 3.7 percent now.

 

Can so few continue to generate enough wealth for so many?

 

The answer is: They cannot.

 

 

This goes way beyond Right and Left, Democrat or Republican. We endure, so far, political parties jostling over nothing more than who gets to pick our pockets.

 

So far, we endure taxation to pay bonuses to those who decimated the economy.

 

Now we face the certain prospect of working harder and longer for less – if we can find jobs — until bankrupted by illness so others can retire early with lifetime health care.

 

How much longer can a nation force the dwindling number of those who produce — who are losing businesses and jobs and health and homes and pensions and investments – to pay taxes?

 

The answer: Not long.

 

That is the tough question America cannot dodge.