By Bill Wilson
A pension bailout for Big Labor is in the works for underfunded multi-employer pension funds. New legislation sponsored by Senator Bob Casey, S. 3157, would give taxpayer backing via the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). If the union bosses get their way on this bill, there may be no stopping the tsunami of pension bailouts for both public and private employees that will follow.
Teamsters Local 776 shop steward Dave Wolf leaves no doubt that he is looking for a bailout. He believes he is entitled it: “The government says it has to bail out the banks when they get into trouble because they’re ‘systemically important.’ Well, we’re the people who move the goods and pay the mortgages and support our communities. I think we’re ‘systemically important’ too.”
The trouble with Senator Casey’s approach is that it will essentially bring insolvent pension funds into a government program to be paid for by other solvent funds, and when that fails, taxpayers are the backstop. That is likely to happen because, as Americans for Limited Government has previously reported, Moody’s warns that large multi-employer pension funds — like the Teamsters — are underfunded by $165 billion.
Casey’s bill is also being pursued in the House of Representatives, sponsored by Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) and Pat Tiberi (R-OH). Despite the obvious bailout of bringing underfunded pension plans into a federal guarantee program, there are eight other Republican co-sponsors: John Linder (GA), Peter Roskam (IL), Thaddeus McCotter (MN), Steven LaTourette (OH), Jo-Ann Emerson (MO), and Aaron Schock (IL).
The bailouts do not end there, however.
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