Because the legislative and executive branch think that maintaining and preventing the entire pension system from collapsing will maintain continuity within the country since their are trillions worth of liabilities dependent on pensions.

In reality bailing out pensions will only hold of "system change" a bit longer and make it a bit more controlled when the change does happen.

Your going to start hearing about massive pension system failures in the next couple months, many private and some states will fail soon. All will be gone before this is over, there will no longer be pensions like we have currently in fairly short order, after this next crash the system will change and the money will change.