Budget games in Carson City

Legislative Republicans have a hill to die for. Only it's more like an anthill -- and it's still too steep for majority Democrats.

Maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in tax increases aren't a done deal, after all.

That's the only bit of good news that can be taken from the super-secret horse trading that's taking place in Carson City, where lawmakers might yet find a way to send the 2009 regular session into overtime.

Democrats are desperate to raise taxes. But they need two-thirds support in both houses to accomplish that and balance the two-year, $6.8 billion spending plan they've already hammered out. Democrats have a two-thirds majority in the Assembly, but they're two senators short of that mark in the upper chamber.

Some Senate Republicans, though, say they'll go along with the higher taxes if Democrats agree to support minor reforms to the state's generous public employee retirement benefits.

This has been a policy no-brainer for the better part of two decades. But legislative Democrats, ever beholden to the public employee unions, have killed every idea to limit these retirement benefits. When Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn, champion of the record tax increases of 2003, tried to end retirement health care subsidies for early government retirees in 2005, the proposal went nowhere.

So Nevada taxpayers are on the hook for more than $15 billion in unfunded pension and retirement health care payments. Unlike private-sector retirees, who can stop working only when they have enough money saved to cover their medical and living expenses for years on end, retired government workers receive guaranteed payments each month until they die -- at which point those benefits can be transferred to a spouse.

And unlike private-sector workers, who aren't eligible for Social Security or Medicare until their 60s and can only dream of retiring in their 40s or 50s, public employees can call it a career after 25 to 30 years of service, regardless of their age. Study after study has shown that Nevada's government retirement benefits are among the most expensive and generous in the nation.

It's a crushing burden for common taxpayers, who must save for themselves and pick up the tab for benefits that they'll never enjoy.

The only sustainable solution is to put all new government hires into a retirement system that requires them to save for themselves, and to make sure all the taxpayer-funded guarantees go away within a few generations.

Yet the reforms currently being advocated go nowhere near this far. Rather than move all new hires onto a 401(k)-style, defined contribution plan, legislation introduced Tuesday in the Senate requires future employees to put in a few more years before cashing their golden ticket, among other small tweaks. It does next to nothing to shrink those massive unfunded liabilities.

This is the GOP's puny price for going along with massive tax increases.

Yet the Democrats still might say no.

The fact that legislative Democrats would resist making even this tiny compromise in order to pick up the two votes they need to impose their massive tax hikes lays bare their true top priority: giving Nevada's public employees a significantly higher standard of living than the people who pay their salaries.