More than a dozen former congressmen from Illinois are drawing taxpayer-subsidized pensions, with the biggest going to retired U.S. House Minority Leader Bob Michel, R-Illinois, followed by his successor in Congress, Ray LaHood, and Chicago Democrat William Lipinski.
That’s according to estimates based on the salaries officials made, pension formulas and interviews.
Federal pension officials refused to provide actual pensions for individuals, citing privacy concerns. In Illinois, state and local government pensions are a matter of public record, available on request.
According to the available data, Michel’s yearly pension is at least $183,000 a year, a Chicago Sun-Times / Better Government Association analysis found. It could be higher. Based on pension data Bloomberg News published in 2012, citing information obtained from federal officials, it could be as high now as $226,000 a year, taking into account cost-of-living adjustments.
Michel, now 91 and living in Washington, D.C., went to the nation’s capital in 1949 as a congressional staffer, then represented a Peoria-area district in Congress for 38 years, until 1995.
He would not discuss the specifics of his pension but said, “I was in federal service for 50 years . . . I have lived up to the rules.”
LaHood draws the next-biggest federal pension from Illinois — an estimated $126,000 a year. LaHood, a Republican who most recently served in the federal government as transportation secretary under President Barack Obama, is a former congressional staffer who served in Congress until joining the president’s cabinet in 2009.
Lipinski is third on the list, with an estimated pension of $95,000 a year.
Phil Crane, the northwest suburban Republican who died in November, had a yearly federal pension estimated at $142,000.
When Obama leaves office, he’ll get a presidential pension equal to the salary Cabinet members are paid — currently $203,700 a year.
He doesn’t qualify for a pension from the U.S. Senate, though, having served there for just four years.
But when he turns 62, Obama will be eligible for an Illinois legislative pension of $18,182 a year for his time as a state senator representing the South Side of Chicago, records show.
Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a west suburban Republican, is getting a federal pension of an estimated $72,000 a year.
Former U.S. Rep. Timothy Johnson, an Urbana Republican, gets a federal pension estimated at $32,000 a year.
Both Hastert and Johnson also receive state pensions, which they began collecting when they turned 55 and were still in Congress. Both previously served in the Illinois General Assembly, which has the most generous pension formula of any Illinois state retirement system.
Hastert’s state pensions — which cover his time as a legislator and also as a teacher at a public high school — came to a combined $42,878 a year as of 2014, records show, while Johnson’s state pension was $77,080.
Compared to Illinois, the federal pension system is in good financial shape and pays decent but less generous benefits. Like Illinois’ troubled state pension systems, the federal system once had an unfunded liability that kept rising. But in the mid-1980s, Congress began requiring federal workers to contribute to Social Security and cut pension benefits for people who started working for the federal government in 1984 or later. A 401k-type savings plan, funded by contributions from federal workers, also was introduced, with up to 5 percent being matched by taxpayers.
U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, entered Congress in 1983. So he will receive a pension under the older, more lucrative system. Durbin, 70, who won re-election last year, would have been entitled to a federal pension of as much as an estimated $125,000 had he left the Senate at the end of 2014, based on his 32 years in Congress.
Federal pensions for Durbin and others who were elected before 1984 can be reduced, though, by the portion of their Social Security payouts earned while they were in Congress.
U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat representing the north suburbs, is the only current member of the Illinois delegation in Congress who’s collecting a state pension in addition to her federal salary. Her congressional pay is $174,000 a year. As of 2014, she was getting a state pension of $26,290 a year after serving eight years in the Illinois General Assembly.
Eight former members of Congress from Illinois have collected a federal paycheck and state pension at the same in recent years, including Roland Burris, the former Illinois attorney general who got a state pension of more than $120,000 a year during his brief tenure as a U.S. senator.
