More Broken Promises - This Time Regarding Pensions

The following is the text of an email I received, asking me to sign a Change.org petition.

"My husband worked for over 30 years for Yellow Freight, and he did it happily, knowing that all of his hard work came with the promise of a pension to support us in our retirement. In 2014, Congress decided that those promises don’t matter -- it passed the Multi-Employer Pension Recovery Act (MPRA), which allows for disastrous cuts to the pensions of those who are already retired and on a fixed income. The pension my husband earned will now be cut by 50%, putting our home and future in jeopardy. 

The MPRA was slipped into a must-pass Omnibus budget bill just days before it had to be voted on to keep the government from shutting down. This dirty tactic was the only way such an unfair law could get passed. Now, lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders are trying to work to reverse the damage before it is too late, with the Keep Our Pension Promises Act (KOPPA).  

Tell Congress to protect seniors’ pensions. Pass the Keep Our Pension Promises Act.  For lawmakers, many of whom are financially secure and don’t need to worry about their retirement, stories like ours don’t seem to matter when they pass harmful legislation. Because of the MPRA, we are not sure if we can keep our home. Even worse, we have been helping two relatives with food and medical expenses, and will likely no longer be able to do so. We don’t live extravagantly. We rely only on the pension my husband earned, social security, and a few small investments.

I’m scared we will be expected to go back into the workforce in our late 60s if we want to survive. Even if we wanted to, my husband has a bad shoulder and hip from over 30 years of heavy lifting at Yellow Freight. I have a heart problem. It is a shame we are in a place where seniors even have to entertain this idea. The wealthiest country in the world can do better. Our lawmakers can do better.

People like us cannot afford laws like the MPRA. It must be reversed or seniors like us could find ourselves on the streets and living in poverty. Please join us in asking Congress to pass the Keep Our Pension Promises Act."

After reading this email I located and read the final version of this act as codified in the Internal Revenue Code.  I also read the adjacent code section that deals with the minimum funding requirements for pension plans.  Then I needed some extra-strength Tylenol to deal with the headache that resulted.

The bottom  line is this.  Congress stuck a modification to the law regarding pension plans into a consolidated continuing funding resolution and as a result thousands of retirees who went into retirement believing their pension benefits were secure are now facing cuts in those benefits.

This is not protecting the public as Congress is charged with doing.  That underfunded pension plans in risk of becoming insolvent is a problem is an undeniable fact.  The question is, how do we deal with this problem?  The solution was supposed to be the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation but that's not working out the way it was designed to.  Like every other government agency, it is broke.  The PBGC's deficit at the end of FY2010 was $23 billion and it has only gone up since then.

If banks are too big to fail, how can we let pension funds fail?