Tanstaafl;
I agree, I have a few family members with the government retirement. I keep telling them to start saving, a lot. I suspect that will be one of the next things to go.

Also, a point to add to the discussion:

No one has had an issue with what government employees, or for that fact what ALPA Unit One and Two employees were making when they, themselves' were making more. Now that "our" pay has been cut, the public sentiment and overall sentiment on here about ALPA is, these people should take cuts to since I have. Good, bad, or indifferent, that is why. It is in effect a race to a new level, a level that is somewhere America has not been in a long time.

We as a Nation and as a union need to look at the root cause of all of this. It comes down to spending more than you have, and putting it on credit. Though choices within our house have been made and may have to be made in the future. The same holds true of local, state, and federal entities. Get the spending and debt in control, and you deal with the root cause. It is not the plan that these teachers have that is sending WI over the edge, it is just the last and possibly the final event in a string of bad decisions.