"By applying - he says - the rules of the contribution system in force today for all other workers to the entire contribution career of MPs, the cost of annuities would be reduced by 40%, falling to 118 million, with a saving, therefore, of around 76 million euros a year (760 million over the next 10 years)”: said the president of INPS, Tito Boeri in a hearing in the Chamber on annuities.
For the former parliamentarians, Boeri revealed, they are paid 2.600 annuities for a cost of 193 million in 2016, about 150 million higher than the contributions paid. Boeri also underlined how spending in the last 40 years has been “always higher than contributions. Normally a pay-as-you-go system (in which contributions pay outstanding pensions) initially feeds large surpluses because there are many more taxpayers than annuity recipients. In the case of deputies and senators, however, the deficit has been large since 1978, when there were still just over 500 annuity earners, clear proof of an unsustainable system. Since the number of taxpayers is fixed - he says - these trends were more than predictable. Yet for many legislatures it was decided not to intervene. These treatments have even become even more generous, as evidenced by a growth, for long periods, more accentuated in expenditure than in the number of recipients. The more recent corrections made to the legislation, despite having arrested what seemed to be an unstoppable growth in spending - he continues - are unable to avoid large deficits even in the next 10 years".
