Watchdog.org Podcast

Breaking the Bank is Watchdog.org’s weekly look at the national public pension crisis, how it’s affecting state and city budgets and what can be done — if anything — to fix it. In this week’s episode, hosts Eric Boehm and Steve Greenhut take a look at the budgetary conundrum facing New York City, which is considering a $10 million cut in funding for its iconic libraries because of increasing pension costs. As Stephen Eide, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, put it in an article published this week: "New York City devoted $8.1 billion to pensions—a 152 percent increase over the prior decade. If pension costs had kept pace with the overall budget, which grew 42 percent between 2005 and 2014, the city would have had an additional $3.6 billion to spend on services." But it's not just libraries that are facing a hit and it's not just New York City making tough choices. As pension costs eat away at a larger share of government budgets, money that could have been spent on