Los Angeles Unified, the second-largest school district in the country, is on pace to spend more than half of its annual budget on retirement and health-care costs by the year 2031. By then, it is projected to spend 22.4 percent of its budget on pensions and 28.4 on health-care benefits for current and former workers. The cost of health care is…

Illinois' pension plans have sent the state on a downward spiral. One out of every four dollars that state taxpayers send to Springfield goes toward pensions, and the vast majority of these contributions go toward paying down large pension debt, not the actual retirement benefits given to state and local workers like teachers. The teacher pension…