>Do I have this right? Railroad Retirement is comparable to Social Security. If you are in RR you are not in Social Security, and vice versa. When you retire in RR you can expect a pension the same size as you would have got if you had been in SS -- not lavish, but enough to get by on. In some cases, the RR pension may be greater than the SS pension, depending on the progress of the fund.

For the most part, you do. There is no "standard" RRB pension amount because each individual's pension is based on a number of factors, to name a few: total career earnings and the average of his/her five highest earning years (which don't have to be sequential). It gets quite complex: two engineers can have virtually identical careers in earnings, time in service, five highest years, and retire on the same day. However, they won't get identical pensions. Retiring before the 60-30 stipulation will result in a reduced pension, frequently significantly so. I'm not sure the SSI situation for "retiring early".

>Now Ryan proposes to cut Railroad Retirement benefits down to equal Social Security benefits. Why does that save the taxpayer a single penny?

It won't, and that's why the railroaders on this board are so hot under the collar.