President Joe Biden on Thursday is announcing the infusion of nearly $36 billion to shore up a financially troubled union pension plan, preventing severe cuts to the retirement incomes of more than 350,000 Teamster workers and retirees across the United States.
The money for the Central States Pension Fund is the largest amount of federal aid provided for a pension plan, the Biden administration said, and comes from the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that he signed into law in 2021.
Many union retirement plans have been under financial pressure because of underfunding and other issues. Without the federal assistance, Teamster members could have seen their benefits reduced by an average of 60% starting within a couple of years.
“Union workers and their families are finally able to breathe a huge sigh of relief, knowing that their hard-earned retirement savings have been rescued from steep cuts,” said Lisa Gomez, assistant labor secretary for employee benefits security.
Multiemployer pension funds are created by agreements between unions and companies and are partially insured by the federal government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The insurance program was on track to become insolvent in 2026, but the pandemic relief money is expected to keep it on firm footing through 2051.
Biden traveled to Ohio in July to highlight the final rules for the pension relief program. Before Thursday, the program had awarded aid to 36 troubled pension plans, but none of those had received more than about $1.2 billion.
The amount going to the Central States Pension Fund represents somewhere between one-third and one-half of the total estimated cost of the federal aid program.
The retirement plan has participants in almost every state, with the largest concentration in the Midwest. There are about 40,000 participants in both Michigan and Ohio, nearly 28,000 in Missouri, 25,000 in Illinois and about 22,000 each in Texas and Wisconsin, according to figures provided by the White House.
(AP)
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One Response
The money was lawfully appropriated by the Congress as part of its massive set of “give-aways” in honor of Covid19 (the very ones that are in part responsible for the current increase in inflation). While it is bad economics to hand out public funds to ones’ friends, it is good politics, and we can be certain that the recipients will remember to send the appropriate kickbacks in the form of campaign contributions to keep the Democrats in business. This serves a major function, as it is illegal for the Congress to appropriate money to subsidize one party’s candidates, and this is a lawful workaround. They could let the Pension Guaranty Fund do the bailing out when the pension plans fails, but that gives the covered persons less money, and doesn’t allow for the kickbacks to fund the 2024 election (which probably will be very expensive).