Watchdog.org Podcast

By Eric Boehm and Steve Greenhut | Watchdog Radio   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 a new pension plan being pitched in California by a group of reform-minded public official. It would put pension benefit increases in voters' hands, by requiring that any increases to current or future public workers (at all levels of government) would have to be approved by a referrendum. There are some problems with direct democracy, of course, but when it comes to pensions does it make sense to take the politicians out of the equation?  If nothing else, it's a novel attempt to make California stop digging the hole any deeper.