This might be a little late, but I saw this pop up on my facebook feed today and it irked me into responding. Here’s my full response:
I don’t want to rain on anybody’s parade or anything, but these pictures that people put up without any sourcing drive me nuts, so here are the actual numbers:
President - Beginning in 1959, all living former presidents were granted a pension, an office, and a staff. The pension has increased numerous times with Congressional approval. Retired presidents now receive a pension based on the salary of the current administration’s cabinet secretaries, which was $199,700 each year in 2012.
Congress - The amount of retirement income Members of Congress receive from taxpayers is determined by a formula that takes into account the years served and the average pay for the top three years in terms of payment. For example, a member elected before 1984 and thus qualifying under the CSRS plan, who worked for 22 years and who had a top three-year average salary of $154,267 would be eligible for a pension payment of $84,847 per year.[3] A member elected after 1984 would have been enrolled under the FERS plan, and their pension payment under similar conditions ($154,267 top three-year average salary, but with only 20 years of service, rather than the 22 in the CSRS example) would be $52,451. In 2002, the average pension payment ranged from $41,000 to $55,000.
Speaker of the House & Majority/Minority Leaders - The numbers listed are their salaries while in office, not their lifetime pensions. These particular leaders tend to receive larger pensions because their best 3 years of salary are higher, thus their pensions are higher than other legistlators. John Boehner’s pension will be somewhere around $85,000 per year based on the formula that applies to him.
Comparing active duty military servicemen to the pensions numbers of legislators makes eye grabbing material, but it’s not really a helpful comparison, but let’s talk about it a bit.
If a serviceman or woman serves for 40+ years, they’re generally eligible to retire at 100% of their active duty salary. They’re eligible to retire with a prorated share of that number after 20 years of service. Given how many active duty and retired service members there are, these numbers become astronomical pretty quickly. By way of example: According to DOD’s Office of the Actuary, in FY 2012 there were 2.3 million military retirees and survivor-benefit recipients. They received approximately $52 billion in payments. Retirement outlays are expected to rise to about $55 billion by 2017 and to $59 billion by 2022 (all in 2012 dollars). That’s a lot of tax dollars. I’m not saying that we should decrease military pensions or anything along those lines, just pointing out that that money has to come from somewhere.
According to the Congressional Research Service, as of Oct. 1, 2013, there were 367 former members of Congress who had retired under the Civil Service Retirement System, the old system that was criticized for being too generous. Those members were receiving an average annual pension of $71,664. The pensions of the 250 former members who retired under the Federal Employees Retirement System, which began in 1987, average even less. Their average pension was $42,048 in 2013, CRS said. So, doing the math, ((367 x $71,664) + (250 x $42,048)) = $36,812,688 total for all congressional pensions in a year.
That means, the congressional pensions are approximately equivalent to 0.06% of the military pension budget. Six tenths of one percent.
Social Security isn’t a pension and was never intended to be. It’s a supplementary source of income that people like me, who are 30 are going to pay into for our entire working careers and never get any money out of unless we raise the amount has to be paid into it. If I recall correctly, social security will be unable to pay full benefits somewhere around 2037.
These pictures that are posted by politically motivated people often provide totally inaccurate information that is completely and utterly misleading and self serving. Just because something is typed in bold doesn’t mean it’s right.