COLUMN RIGHT/ JAMES P. PINKERTON : Shell Game Could Cost Your Pension : By rewriting the rules, Clintonians can achieve social goals by forcing investments into risky ventures.

Bill Clinton wants to use your retirement money to pay for his reelection. Here’s how: His Administration will direct pension fund assets toward pork-barrel spending programs that will enrich Clinton’s Wall Street contributors, hire his unionized supporters and satisfy the big-spending industrial policy-makers.

Clinton’s choice for transportation secretary, Federico Pena, said this about tapping pension funds in his Senate confirmation hearings: “There are opportunities where pension funds can be accessed for the public good.”

As Willie Sutton would say, pension funds are where the money is--$3.4 trillion. Of course, that money isn’t sitting idle; it’s invested. More than 75 million Americans count on that money, which generates $150 billion a year in benefits. To guard against mismanagement and corruption, pension fund managers operate under strict fiduciary rules that require them to seek the maximum safe return for their beneficiaries.

The movie “Hoffa” reminds us that there are criminal penalties for fiddling with pension funds. The Clinton Administration will tweak these rules--a flick of the regulatory wrist at the Labor Department will funnel billions into politically inspired “infrastructure” projects. Why do the politicians want to do this? In these deficit-conscious times, they need to get money to “rebuild America” from somewhere. And they think they can get away with this.

Previous Democrats, such as Walter Mondale, were honest enough to advocate huge tax increases to pay for more spending. The left has learned from his mistake. Why take the heat for raising taxes when they can spend your pension money “off the books” for their pet projects? Jesse Jackson has been the spearhead of this new scheme. For years, he has urged “social investment” of pension money in everything from housing to fighting drugs.

Robert Reich, our next labor secretary, likes it, too. In his book “The Next American Frontier,” he called for government-sponsored banks to channel pension assets to provide “low-interest long-term loans” to restructuring industries. In Clinton’s campaign book, “Putting People First,” the future President argued for an infrastructure program “leveraged” by other sources, including “pension fund contributions.”

A fraction of that $3.4 trillion will pay for a lot of roads, bridges and anything else that imaginative pols can label as “investment.” Think of all the groundbreakings, ribbon-cuttings and photo opportunities Clinton can attend. And the cost? Who’s to know? When’s the last time you checked with the Labor Department to see about your pension fund?

The Clintonians have checked. In 1985, then-Gov. Clinton passed a law requiring the teachers’ retirement fund to invest up to 10% of its assets in Arkansas. Defenders of politicized investment claim high returns. But ask yourself this: If these investments are so great, why aren’t pension funds already investing? Why do they need the politicians to help them pick winners and losers? The people of Kansas know about losing. A similar law there cost the state retirement fund its entire $65-million stake in a busted Kansas thrift.

It doesn’t take a wipeout to hurt present and future retirees. A reduction in the annual yield on investment by just a single percentage point--from, say, 6% to 5%--will decrease the compounded total by one-fourth over two decades.

The January, 1993, Bulletin of the American Assn. of Retired Persons quotes Edward Burrows, the former president of the American Society of Pension Actuaries: “Social investing and getting maximum returns for retirees are both highly desirable goals. But we’re kidding ourselves if we think we can satisfy one without shortchanging the other.”

No problem, say the proponents of politically targeted investment. As Pena said in his hearings, “strong insurance” will protect pensioners. Such shell games simply transfer the risk from retirees to taxpayers. And Labor Department watchdog David Ball points out that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. is already underfunded. The potential cost of tampering with pension funds dwarfs the $300-billion savings-and-loan disaster.

Buying votes today and making future generations suffer the consequences is exactly the sort of short-term thinking that Ross Perot railed against. Since the toothless Senate Republicans weren’t paying attention in the confirmation hearings for the Clinton Cabinet, maybe we should look to “United We Stand” to send them a message.

Pensiongate. You heard it here first. You’ll pay for it later.