MS Dems Attack Nunnelee On PERS- Does That Hurt Him?

The Mississippi Democrats said they are beginning a series where they will look at Alan Nunnelee’s record in the legislature. They choose an interesting topic to begin on.

They knocked Nunnelee for his support of legislation to increase the employee portion of the state pension system. That portion will increase from 7.25 percent to 9 percent, the first increase since the early 1990s. The employer (taxpayer) portion is currently at 12 percent. Without the increase, money to support the system would need to come from agency budgets (and you know what they are looking like these days).

So obviously this increase means state employees will have to pay more for their share and in return see a small paycheck. This lead the Democrats to say: “Alan Nunnelee promises he stands against tax increases but he’s happy to raise fees and cut pay for teachers, law enforcement officers and other state and local employees rather than use the state’s reserve funds. Whether they work in K-12 education, law enforcement or at our community colleges, these families will have less money to pay the bills because of Alan Nunnelee. Those are his values and that is his destructive and dangerous legacy.”

A couple points about this:

1) I didn’t realize Alan Nunnelee is the entire legislature. What the Democrats left out was that this bill passed the Senate by a 28-16 margin and cleared the House 81-39. And last time I checked there are not 28 Republicans in the Senate or 81 Republicans in the House. You can do the math. Speaker Billy McCoy called this vote “part of the economic times we are living in.” (I hope Jamie Franks doesn’t declare McCoy a Democrat-In-Name-Only now).

2) Does the average voter care if state employees have to pay more for their generous pension? One of the biggest punching bags on the federal level right now are federal employees who have done pretty well for themselves while most of the country was in a recession. They are a good symbol of bloated government. But with state employees it is a little different. They are a little more human and that is what the Democrats tried to do by referring to them as teachers, police officers, etc- not state employees. The deceptive title of their press release was ‘Pay Cuts for All’ when in reality it is pay cuts for those whose paycheck is dependant on taxpayers. But, the question remains does the average Mississippian who does not receive a generous pension feel bad that state employees now have to contribute an additional 1.75 percent? We all know what voters would say if they had a choice between raising taxes for all or this pension contribution increase. In a federal election in this environment, running on the side of government employees is just not wise.

3) I am little surprised they didn’t go after Nunnelee from the right at this time. We have seen other attacks on Nunnelee (mainly from the DCCC) where they went after him for his support of the cigarette tax, hospital tax, etc. in hopes that it will anger conservatives so they can get the bloody primary they know worked last time around.

4) I will give the Mississippi Democrats credit- this is better than the anti-Nunnelee press releases the DCCC comes up with.