Western Railroad Discussion > Railroad Retirement and the Paul Ryan Budget (Continued

There was quite a lively discussion this forum last week regarding possible changes to Railroad Retirement in the Paul Ryan budget, just approved by the Republican controlled House of Representatives. The BLET (Engineer's Union) website has a posting on it which somewhat clarifies what the provisions are. Here's the link to it:

http://www.ble-t.org/pr/news/newsflash.asp?id=5262

Two key paragraphs from the BLET posting:

"Perhaps the most devastating portion of the Ryan Budget are the provisions that sponsors claim “would conform Tier 1 so that its benefits would equal those of Social Security, with an estimated savings to taxpayers of $2 billion over 10 years.” Enactment of this legislation would eliminate the Railroad Retirement Occupational Disability program, as well as the “60/30” provision for allowing early retirement for railroad workers at age 60 if they have 30 years of service. Under the legislation, the earliest these individuals could retire would be age 62. Annuities for spouses of these workers also would be negatively impacted in this manner. These provisions would negatively affect the annuities of almost 120,000 non-disabled employees, almost 90,000 spouses and over 62,000 occupationally disabled employees.

The Ryan Budget fundamentally misconstrues the relationship between Railroad Retirement and Social Security, and ignores the fact that all Railroad Retirement benefits above Social Security — whether Tier 1 benefits or Tier 2 benefits — are fully funded by railroad workers and their employers; none of these benefits are funded from the general treasury. Therefore, no actual budgetary savings would result from enactment of this legislation."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/12 17:05 by johnw.

This Paul Ryan Buget is a giant ripoff of all railroad employee.s..the Republicans have really come up with a killer to the railroad world.....Let hope this never happens....

One of the "corporate loopholes" people are always looking to limit is the deduction for contributions to qualified (under the tax code) pension plans. In general, the employer gets a tax deduction when the money is contributed, while the employee doesn't get taxed until the money comes out as a payment.

When a retirement plan allows retirement at, say, age 55 with 30 years of service, the employer gets a bigger deduction /makes a bigger contribution because they're funding for more retirement years than a plan with a minimum retirement age of 60 or 62. In general, social security allows a partial benefit at age 62, and a full benefit at ages 65-68, depending on your year of birth. The Railroad Retirement plan provisions are different, and much better for the plan participant.

By synchronizing the plan provisions of RRB with Social Security, the RRB will resemble SSI more closely than it does now. My guess, and it's just a guess, is that both parties would like to merge the tier 1 assets of this RRB plan into SSI at some future date to avoid increasing contributions from the huge number of non-rail workers. The current "payroll tax holiday" is largely waiving current worker contributions to social security, so the situation is getting worse day by day.

If it passes the senate and becomes law, your unions should file suit against the government due to the RR being fully paid by two parties by agreement and not government. The government would be violating a lawful contract. Courts do not look favorbly on that.

well i hope somebody tells the RRB because when i talked to a high management official last week there was no scuttlebutt whatsoever anywhere throughout the system about this at all

Sometimes a budget proposal is extreme, just to get the other side to return to reality. Here is a portion of what else was written, to show the extremity of the other side:

"... This budget is one more example of how Republican... are trying to hurt middle class Americans ... Also included are the standard targets... the poor, the sick, the elderly and the nation’s children, while allowing the wealthy to continue to get away... "

Interesting how it often comes down to "the children" whenever one side wants to accuse the other of wrongdoing.

Out_Of_Service Wrote:
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> well i hope somebody tells the RRB because when i
> talked to a high management official last week
> there was no scuttlebutt whatsoever anywhere
> throughout the system about this at all

Well it's nowhere near being law yet so I can understand why RRB wouldn't be familiar with it or want to comment on it. Most railroad workers or the unions that represent them didn't seem to know anything about it until quite recently, maybe only when it was approved by the House and some of the hidden details became apparent. As a retired railroader I had no idea RRB was even mentioned in the plan myself.

The rest of the non railroad working public will not be thrilled to find out that they will eventually have to work to age 67 (instead of 65) to get Medicare and that Medicare will really be a voucher system based on the second cheapest available health care in their community. Barring a complete Republican takeover of both houses of Congress and a Republican in the Oval Office I don't give this budget as written much of a chance.

Regardless of which party runs the country, or who gets elected, they don't have a clue about the real world.

That budget is going no where.