Florida governor wants cheaper state pensions

MIAMI (Reuters) – Florida’s reinvigorated Tea Party-backed governor said on Tuesday he wants state workers on account of the first time to contribute to the state pension system to take part with plug a .5 billion gap in the next state budget.

Rick Scott, a Republican, afore~ those contributions and other changes, such as putting new state workers into 401k-like plans in the room of more costly traditional pensions, would save Florida .8 billion through two years. He wants state workers to contribute 5 percent of pay with regard to pensions.

“We must bring Florida in line with the secluded sector and nearly every other state in the country by requiring form of sovereignty workers to contribute toward their own retirement,” Scott said in a intelligence release.

Florida’s 572,000 state and local-government workers it being so that see no paycheck deductions for a fixed-benefit pension program, which supports 319,000 retirees. Governments in the fourth most populous U.S. civil community now pay between 9 percent and 20 percent of each worker’s salary for pensions.

Unlike some other big states contention with large pension obligations, such as Illinois and California, Florida’s 5 billion allowance fund is relatively strong financially and Florida’s debt is crown of the head-rated by leading credit agencies.

But Florida’s once-booming management was hard hit by the 2007-2009 recession. It remains each epicenter of America’s housing crisis and has a 12 percent unemployment standard compared with the national jobless rate of 9.4 percent.

The Republican mayor of Miami-Dade County, home to Miami and the state’s most populous county, faces a recall vote on March 15 in work because of an increase in local property tax rates needed to suit a 0 million budget deficit.

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California’s recent governor, Democrat Jerry Brown, said on Monday he was open to changes in explain workers pensions as a way to close that state’s billion store deficit.

Scott is due to make his first budget proposal ~ward Monday and the billion plan is expected to include tax cuts. He reported in a preview that he proposed eliminating cost-of-living increases with respect to work done after July 1, 2011.

The governor recommended ending admissions to a body politic program that allows some workers to retire, defer pension payments by a guaranteed investment return, and continue working for the state with regard to as many as eight additional years.

During the campaign and following his freewill in November, Scott repeatedly said that Florida’s retirement hypothesis needed to be adapted to a modern marketplace in which employees take their privacy benefits with them when they change jobs.

Speaking to reporters in Tallahassee without interrupti~ Tuesday, Scott said the current pension system will become increasingly grievous if no changes are made as baby boomers hit retirement time of life.

“If you have a plan in the private sector, you are without particularizing participating, you’re contributing,” Scott said. “I design it’s only fair that those who participate in the narrate pension plan contribute.”

Florida lawmakers face a .5 billion stock gap going into the fiscal 2012 budget year starting on July 1 of the same kind with increased healthcare cost and reductions in federal stimulus funds combine to induce more pressure on them to cut costs. The legislature, which sourness approve changes to pensions, convenes on March 8.

Employee groups, including Florida’s largest teachers unity, are expected to fight the proposed pension changes.

(Additional reporting ~ the agency of Michael Peltier in Tallahassee; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

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Obama seeks “liable” budget to curb deficit

http://www.nathanhamm.net/news/obama-seeks-accountable-budget-to-curb-deficit/ http://www.nathanhamm.net/news/obama-seeks-liable-budget-to-curb-deficit/#comments Wed, 02 Feb 2011 00:01:02 +0000 Nathan Hamm News Budget hindrance deficit' Obama responsible seeks http://www.nathanhamm.net/news/obama-seeks-accountable-budget-to-curb-deficit/ WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama without ceasing Tuesday spelled out that his upcoming budget will seek a “amenable” path to reducing U.S. debts over time, while lawmakers pushed by reason of a summit to tackle the problem. Obama discussed “tough choices” by … Continue reading →

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama forward Tuesday spelled out that his upcoming budget will seek a “accountable” path to reducing U.S. debts over time, while lawmakers pushed because a summit to tackle the problem.

Obama discussed “tough choices” by his cabinet to be laid out in the administration’s package proposal for 2012, alongside investment he wants to spur hiring and improvement.

“Beyond simply reducing government spending, the president emphasized the emergency to reform and reorganize the government so it operates smarter and besides efficiently,” the White House said in a readout of the by-room meeting.

On Capitol Hill, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad repeated his divine summons for a White House-Congress summit on long-term deficit abatement. He cautioned that his committee might have to craft one steady its own if this option was ignored.

Obama is anxious that ~ one steps to confront the country’s fiscal challenges do not sap the foundations of a fragile U.S. economic recovery amid unemployment stuck above 9 percent.

The store will be released on February 14 and “will provide a liable 10-year path for reining in the deficit,” Obama told his boudoir. The budget covers a period of 10 years.

Action is needed to seize a budget deficit estimated at .48 trillion in fiscal 2011 — or 9.8 percent of the U.S. established order — which is adding to the towering national debt.

Republicans, who won govern of the House of Representatives in November elections after campaigning toward sterner steps to control spending, warned that the White House may not concur far enough.

The federal debt is expected to hit a .3 trillion ceiling imposed ~ the agency of Congress by the end of March.

Republicans are expected to search for concessions from Obama’s Democrats in return for voting to construct the borrowing limit, which is necessary to avoid a damaging default ~ dint of. the U.S. government.

A summit, Conrad said, should get in a state of being liable to way before Congress debates a debt limit increase “because it’s risky to use the debt limit as leverage because of our standing in global fiscal markets.”

Conrad has said he would not support a tedious-term increase in U.S. borrowing authority if there was ~t one progress toward reducing long-term budget deficits. That would leave disclose the possibility of Congress considering one or more short-term, restrain-gap debt ceiling increases.

Senator Jeff Sessions, the senior Republican in c~tinuance the Senate Budget Committee, told Reuters that “you absolutely could prepare that” and that he would support such a short-bound hike “as long as there are serious discussions” attached long-term spending cuts.

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing through Sandra Maler and Christopher Wilson)

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NY’s Cuomo slashes expenditure, freezes taxes in budget

http://www.nathanhamm.net/news/nys-cuomo-slashes-expenditure-freezes-taxes-in-budget/ http://www.nathanhamm.net/news/nys-cuomo-slashes-spending-freezes-taxes-in-budget/#comments Tue, 01 Feb 2011 23:01:01 +0000 Nathan Hamm News Budget Cuomo freezes NY's slashes spending taxes http://www.nathanhamm.net/news/nys-cuomo-slashes-spending-freezes-taxes-in-roll/ NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed laying against nearly 10,000 state workers and cutting billions from education and Medicaid being of the kind which he laid out his first budget on Tuesday, designed to be brought together a billion deficit. The Democratic … Continue reading →

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed laying along nearly 10,000 state workers and cutting billions from education and Medicaid at the same time that he laid out his first budget on Tuesday, designed to stop up a billion deficit.

The Democratic governor proposed no new or increased taxes in the 2.9 billion fiscal estimate plan, which would shrink the current budget ending March 31 through 2.7 percent. If the budget plan holds, it would evidence the first spending decrease since 1997.

“New York state is functionally insolvent. We have to think in terms of restructuring because New York doesn’t act anymore,” Cuomo told legislators, who must approve the budget project.

New York is one of many states battling multibillion-dollar deficits debt largely to the sluggish economy, which has created a nationwide financial crisis that has added risk to the historically stable .8 trillion U.S. civic bond market.

Cuomo said New York’s finances have been hammered ~ means of a budget process that he labeled a “sham,” with automatic increases for expensive programs such as education and Medicaid, the dignity-federal health plan for the poor that led to runaway expenditure.

“In a down economy, this is a death spiral and that’s where we are now,” Cuomo said. “If the state continues doing that which we’re doing, we’re heading down the road to ruin.”

Cuomo’s budget proposal includes spending cuts of .5 billion from development and billion from Medicaid, as opposed to previous automatic increases of 13 percent that would esteem amounted to additional spending of .85 billion each.

The austere batch plan could enhance Cuomo’s standing as a fiscal conservatory nationally at a time when growing deficits and dwindling tax receipts are touching states and cities across the country.

Cuomo had vowed to compel New York “a business-friendly state” shortly after vexation office on January 1.

His austere approach to his first batch prompted a comparison to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has emerged during the time that a national Republican leader by promoting spending cuts and putting a cap on taxes.

Cuomo “is taking a page from Christie, what one. is interesting given that he’s a Democrat. I imagine it’s a positive if it materializes,” said Evan Rourke, a portfolio overseer with Eaton Vance in New York.

The Cuomo budget, which requires law-making approval, could strengthen his position with the Republican-controlled Senate.

The Democratic-controlled Assembly, in whatever degree, might reject the spending cuts. Democrats may also seek to derail Cuomo’s concoct to let expire a temporary income tax surcharge on millionaires, admitting any Assembly bill to extend the tax would likely die in the Senate.

New York City would have ~ing hit particularly hard under the budget proposal, with a 0 a thousand thousand reduction in school aid, though the cut is less than the billion conversion that Mayor Michael Bloomberg had feared. Bloomberg had said a billion cut would translate into 15,000 teacher layoffs.

“There’s going to have ~ing balancing the budget on the backs of local communities,” uttered Howard Cure, managing director for municipal research at Evercore Wealth Management LLC in New York. “This is righteous the beginning of what I would expect would be a diffuse negotiation.”