By JM Rieger and Niels Lesniewski

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid slammed the door on using pension funds to offset a long-term surface transportation bill Tuesday, saying federal employees “have been whacked enough.” “We do know that one of his proposals takes into consideration a tremendous whack at federal employees,” Reid said. “Federal employees have been whacked enough, and that can be part of no long-term, short-term, medium-term agreement on highways or anything else.” “Pension smoothing” has been used previously to fund short-term highway funding bills by temporarily reducing pension contributions, thus boosting companies’ taxable income to fund the measures. Read more.