(Reuters) – Bucking criticism about their financial performance, state retirement systems’ assets grew in 2010, with investment earnings rising for the first time since 2007, the U.S. Census reported on Thursday.
The pension funds‘ cash and investments totaled $2.2 trillion in 2010, up 10.7 percent, or $213.9 billion, from 2009, when their cash and investment holdings fell by $610.8 billion.
The funds’ investment earnings were $289.6 billion in 2010, compared with 2009, when the investments lost $511.5 billion.
In November 2010, conservative Republicans and Tea Party members swept many state elections, bringing with them to statehouses and governor mansions skepticism about public employee compensation.
For the last year, the country has been in a long, and often angry, debate about how public pensions should work.
Members of Congress, including Senator Orrin Hatch, the highest-ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, and Senator Jim DeMint, a Republican member of the bicameral Joint Economic Committee, are planning to introduce federal legislation to address public pension funding.
The Census found that total pension obligations were $3.2 trillion in 2010, compared with $3.1 trillion in 2009. Benefit payments in 2010 alone rose 6.2 percent to $63.5 billion.
Estimates of how much pensions are short for paying benefits to future