The in box. Kadner: John Cullerton is right.

It ought to be noted that neither Cullerton nor Martire is saying that pension funding deficits are not a problem. They are. They’re just not an “imminent” problem while the annual budget deficits are.

Gov. Pat Quinn really hasn’t helped things by holding news conferences to stress that the pension crisis is the most important problem facing this state.

If the Legislature doesn’t achieve pension reform now, the governor has basically told the public, the state is going to financially collapse.

What pension reform today would do is lower the interest rate that the state would pay on the sale of bonds. In other words, Illinois could borrow more money and spend even more money than it has.

And that’s exactly how the pension “crisis” was created in the first place.

Instead of making its mandated payments to its five pension systems, the state for decades spent that money on other government programs.

Back in 1995, Martire said, Republican Gov. Jim Edgar recognized the problem, and a law was passed requiring Illinois to make its annual pension contribution, including interest on what it owed.

Only, under Edgar’s plan, the so-called “pension ramp” didn’t begin for another 15 years.

“It was the perfect political solution,” Martire said. “You keep on spending while kicking the can down the road, and the idea was that none of those elected officials would be around in 15 years when that pension ramp kicked in.”

Martire contends that it’s the ramp, including 8.5 percent interest on the amount of money owed, that’s creating the pension crisis more than the benefits provided by the five plans.

He said the state’s pension contribution last year was $4.1 billion, of which only $1.6 billion was the cost of funding benefits. In fiscal year 2013, more than $5 billion went to repay debt incurred.

So even if benefits were changed to bring down that annual amount to $1 billion (a really good deal), it wouldn’t offset the billions of dollars the state loses once that temporary income tax increase vanishes.