Rockville, MD – Jonathan Jenkins announced today, a legislative plan to fully support the elimination of Congress’ defined pension plan as this benefit demonstrates yet another disconnect between Washington DC and the constituents they are elected to serve, not benefit fiscally from for years.

Our forefathers envisioned a highly involved citizenry within Congress, not career politicians.  Their expectation was for statesmen to serve a couple terms at the most and return to their business upon leaving the Congress.  In 1946, Congress established pensions for themselves and in 2003 went as far as preventing members from “opting-out”.  Today these pensions are 2 to 3 times as generous as those in the private sector unnecessarily costing taxpayers $40M annually.

The legislation I will propose achieves 4 key objectives

1. Eliminate defined pension plans for members of Congress
2. Reduce long term obligations and the national debt
3. Start to restore trust with the American public
4. Increase incentive for members of Congress to leave after a couple of terms

To achieve these key objectives, the reform legislation will minimally include;

• Eliminate newly elected members of Congress from participating in the Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS)
• Stop existing members of Congress from further contributions into FERS or the Civil Service Retirement System (CRSR)
• Reduce maximum percentage of retirement for FERS and CRSR participants from 80% to 50% to align with military pensions
• Allow all members of the House of Representatives to opt out of FERS
• Allow all members to retroactively opt-out and forego the pension altogether
• Eliminate death gratuity payments
• Eliminate pensions of members convicted of felonies that occurred while in office
• For a period of 10 years, earmark annual savings to pay down the national debt

These changes are so important to the Congress that immediately after taking the oath for the 118th Congress, I will submit the proposed bill to the House for debate and public viewing.  As the next Congressman for Western Maryland, I pledge to not partake in this pension system and continually work with any house member, regardless of party, to achieve these reforms.

I encourage you to share comments and concerns to feedback@vote4jenkins.us.

PDF of the Press Release.