Time is a powerful concept. Once it sets in, you feel it. Unfortunately for retired Texas educators, nearly two decades have passed while living on a fixed income with no permanent, across-the-board cost-of-living adjustment to their standard annuity from the state of Texas. Unlike Social Security, which most Texas educators don’t get anyway, the Texas Teacher Retirement System has zero protection for providing cost-of-living increases adjusted for inflation to its own pension system. Most U.S. states have an automatic COLA structure built into their teacher pension system. Texas is in the minority of states requiring COLAs to be passed on an ad-hoc basis. The time has come to get this done.
With the greatest inflationary increases in almost 50 years and with no adjustment to the standard, fixed annuity for any educator who has retired since 2004, their purchasing power has plummeted. The U.S. dollar in 2004 was worth 1.5 times what it’s worth today. As a result, the very Texans who devoted their lives and careers working full time for our great state have been forgotten. Retired educators struggle to maintain the resources necessary to cover basic and fundamental needs, including food, housing and health care.
It’s glaringly obvious, considering the length of time since the last COLA, and the punishing inflationary realities, that our Texas retired school employees deserve and badly need a cost-of-living adjustment to their TRS monthly standard annuity. The crucial need for a COLA is profound and transcends partisan politics. Regardless of which party wins the November elections in Texas, the Texas Legislature must deliver a cost-of-living adjustment during the next legislative session. Texas AFT Retiree Plus is calling on the Texas Legislature to finally get this right after a long period of neglect. We appreciate the opportunity to work with elected leaders in Austin who will place this issue on the agenda and finally pass the COLA retired educators are faithfully waiting for.
Rita Runnels
Chairperson
TX AFT Retiree Plus
Austin
Beverly Avila
McAllen representative
AFT Retiree Plus
Extreme left
vs. ‘Big Lie’
It’s crystal clear that the extreme left is in a great-panicked rush to keep smearing conservatives by accusing them of the unprecedented hate against half of America, that they, and only they, irresponsibly spew.
In a constitutionally free America, a president’s duty is to honorably accept and represent all its people, which he swears to uphold upon a Bible on Inauguration Day. Anything different from that is reminiscent of failed Nazi, Fascist and Communist dictators. It has no room in free America. It only happens in repressed banana republics, Stalinist, Marxist and Communist countries.
Many call it the “Big Lie,” many others call it the “Big Rig.” May the truth and God’s justice prevail for all victims of unprecedented hate and evil.
Imelda Coronado
Mission
Enough
already
Enough already. Vote Republican. Save America.
Jose C. Coronado
Mission
