I honestly don't think it is nonsense. I'd throw collecting government pensions in there with the other government handouts. I mean if you don't really "need" the government pension, should you take it and deplete the funds of the pension plan? Part of the pension funding comes straight out of the public treasury (ie taxpayers' pockets). Why not withdraw your contributions (plus interest) and forfeit your pension if you are highly principled? I see no one opting for that choice.
Yes, it is nonsense. You are only partly right. The old federal retirement system (the Civil Service Retirement System, or CSRS) was a 100% defined benefit plan, and pretty generous (something like 80% of salary benefit), and a portion of that system remains an unfunded liability, until those people and their beneficiaries die off. But CSRS was phased out in 1984, and replaced with the Federal Employees Retirement System, of FERS. FERS is a part defined benefit (pension), part defined contribution (TSP, the Fed's "401k") plan, and FERS employees also contribute to Social Security. The FERS pension system is 100% funded (for at least the next 80 years), by a combination of employee and employer contributions made every two weeks. See for yourself:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42741.pdfNow, you can argue about whether federal employees are paid too much for what they do (evidence suggests that in more menial jobs, they are), but the federal workforce is dominated by people with advanced degrees doing high-skill functions like lawyers, scientists (think NASA, CDC, etc), engineers, doctors (VA), etc., many of whom are paid salaries that are well below what their private sector counterparts receive. But the tradeoff for accepting that lower current salary is accepting a portion of their compensation in the form of deferred salary. Calling a deferred benefit earned from one's labor a handout is highly disingenous and patently false.