RAIMONDO: I'm Gina Raimondo and you might have heard about Mayor Taveras attacking pension reform, claiming I did it to enrich Wall Street. Nothing could be more wrong. I was 11 years old when my dad lost his job at Bulova. I've never forgotten how hard that was. So when I became treasurer and inherited the pension crisis, I knew if we didn't face up to the problem a lot of people were going to get hurt, and we couldn't let that happen. Our reforms passed by overwhelming majorities in the legislature and in the end most of our changes were agreed to by every union except one. We saved the pensions and kept cities out of bankruptcy. Now, instead of raising taxes on families and slashing services, we've already saved millions that we can invest in creating jobs, and that's what's most important. We have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and too many families are hurting. We have to get Rhode Island back to work.
