Coalition

Tom Lussier holds up a map showing the 50-state effect of mandatory coverage during a July 18 briefing for House staff

to Preserve Retirement Security officials on July 18 told dozens of House of Representatives staffers that forcing newly-hired state and workers to participate in Social Security would be a "high cost with high risk [measure] that doesn't benefit anybody."

The legislative aides attending the coalition's second Capitol Hill briefing of the year heard why mandatory Social Security coverage would be bad not only for government workers in systems that are not now covered by the program but also for tens of millions of Americans outside of public employment.

"This is not a partisan issue. This is not even a labor-management issue," Tom Lussier of CPRS administrator Lussier, Gregor Vienna & Associates told the group. "The bottom line is this is a dollars and cents issue for local taxpayers. ... This is a fiscal issue that will have a negative effect on your constituents."

Mandatory coverage would cost state and local employers and employees $44 billion over five years, an expense that would almost certainly lead not only to cuts in public retirement benefits but also increases in taxes or reductions in government services, Lussier, coalition Chair Terri Bierdeman and CPRS Executive Committee member Gerri Madrid-Davis told the group. In exchange Social Security's solvency would be extended by only two years, they noted.

Coalition officials, through this briefing and one held for Senate staff in May, hope to prevent mandatory coverage from being included in Social Security reform legislation. Although President Bush's campaign to make personal investment accounts a part of Social Security has faltered, the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee are expected to produce reform legislation before the end of the year.

Near the end of the briefing, an aide to Rep. Mark Green, R-Wisc., asked for co-sponsors to a non-binding resolution sponsored by Green that opposes mandatory Social Security coverage for public employees.

Staffers in attendance represented nine states - California, Illinois, Ohio, Colorado, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Missouri, Kentucky and Wisconsin.

"We were very pleased by the turnout and would like to thank the CPRS members who have worked for the past few weeks to encourage staffers to attend," Bierdeman said after the briefing. "The facts are on our side in this debate. We just have to make sure that lawmakers and their aides have those facts and we moved closer to that goal today."