Unfortunately, when investment returns come in under projections it falls on taxpayers to make up the shortfall. The nearly $5 billion of missing investment income will be added to the unfunded liability, and state taxpayers will be paying more and more money during the next 30 years to make up for the poor returns.

Ultimately, there are only two numbers that matter: the amount of money the pension funds will pay out for earned benefits and the amount of money it has on hand. Between now and 2045, the five state pension systems are scheduled to pay more than $600 billion to retired government workers. They have just $62 billion on hand.

The simple fact is that the pension systems are broke. Under new accounting rules, the funds have less than 29 percent of the money they should have in the bank today to make their pension payments. None of the five systems even have enough money on hand to pay out benefits to government workers who have already retired, let alone those still working.

The longer lawmakers delay action, the worse Illinois’ pension debt crisis will become. Only major reforms, like moving to defined contribution plans for all future work and tackling the automatic, compounded cost-of-living adjustment can get the problem under control.