The coalition sent the letter below to Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) President Dallas Salisbury in response to an EBRI study that concluded that mandatory coverage of all public employees would be an effective reform measure.

April 4, 2005

Mr. Dallas Salisbury, President
Employee Benefit Research Institute
2121 K Street, NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20037-1896

Dear Mr. Salisbury:

I am writing on behalf of the members of the Coalition to Preserve Retirement Security (CPRS) to express our deep concern regarding EBRI's recent attack on the retirement security of over five million public employees. By choosing to advance the idea of mandating all local, state and federal employees into Social Security to fill the program's funding deficit – particularly without a companion analysis of the impact of such an action on the affected public employees, their current retirement programs, their employers, and the taxpayers who fund their benefits – you are contributing to a policy discussion that produces few winners while guaranteeing millions of losers!

Given your appreciation for the value of defined benefit retirement programs, I can only assume that you have advanced this idea without considering the potential impact of this option on countless DB programs across the 50 states. I have included a copy of a report that was prepared by The Segal Company on behalf of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and our coalition. While this report documents the significant impact of mandating all new state and local employees into the Social Security system, no one has calculated the devastation that would be caused by mandating all current local, state and federal employees into the program as your recent report suggests.

While your press release points out that EBRI doesn't take a policy position on any Social Security reform proposal, by choosing to focus on only two possible alternatives to the President's call for private accounts – as opposed to countless other possibilities or combinations of possibilities – you have deliberately chosen to shine a spotlight on an option that threatens the retirement security of public employees all over America.

To be fair, we strongly urge you to dedicate EBRI's resources to produce a full analysis of how such a public policy would affect those public employees, their existing retirement programs, their employers and the taxpayers who fund their benefits. Remembering that the vast majority of state and local governments will be unable to reduce their current pension funding obligations due to constitutional and contract protections, we would welcome your analysis of how state and local governments will absorb this major new unfunded mandate without a myriad of potential unintended consequences (i.e. major layoffs of public employees, repeal of existing defined benefit programs, reductions across the board in local services, sharp cutbacks in public education, threats to essential public safety services, etc.).

We would welcome an opportunity to discuss these issues with you at your convenience. If that is a possibility, please contact Tom Lussier, our coalition administrator at (703) 684-3601 or at tlussier@lgva.net.

Sincerely,

Terri Bierdeman, Chair
Coalition to Preserve Retirement Security

Enc.: The Cost Impact of Mandating Social Security for State and Local Governments, May 1999

cc: All Coalition Members and National Partners