Nick Lampson: “there are an awful lot of good people who want to leave some kind of employment into which they have been paying Social…”

“there are an awful lot of good people who want to leave some kind of employment into which they have been paying Social Security and go into the classroom, and our classrooms across the State of Texas and across this whole country are crying for good people to go into the classroom. My wife was one of those people who had a job that paid into Social Security for a long period of time. She is going to receive minimal, if anything, from the teacher retirement system. But upon her retirement is it right for her to have been discouraged, after being encouraged to come in, because she is not going to receive some of the benefits she thought she might be able to? That is not right. That is not what we are trying to do here. We want to be able to encourage good qualified people to go into our classrooms. This legislation is going to have broad implications for teachers in Texas and many other States. It is going to very likely force an exodus, a mass exodus of good experienced teachers from our public schools. What impetus does an experienced teacher have to stay in the classroom and continue teaching if the government is, in effect, going to significantly reduce his or her retirement payment potential after this year? Well, the bill also fails to address a larger issue for public servants in this country. The government pension offset unfairly penalizes teachers and government workers and the employees most likely to pay into a public pension plan.”