What’s been designed here is a project that ensures a fossil fuel agenda, both in the literal and figurative sense.
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Department of Labor and Related Agencies
making new pension promises. More timely and detailed reporting should be imposed.
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) insures benefits for private sector pension plans, with separate single-employer and multiemployer insurance programs.
• The PBGC’s annual report must be submitted on time, and with timely data that uses fair-market value principles to calculate the PBGC’s finances. The PBGC has been submitting portions of statutorily required annual reports many months late and using out-of-date data. And PBGC'’s data on plans is almost five years old. These problematic practices make it difficult for Congress to become aware of serious problems in the insurance programs, which received a bailout of over $85 billion in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act.
The PBGC should use existing statutory authority to protect workers, retirees, employers, and taxpayers by closely monitoring and taking appropriate remedial action with regard to badly run and underfunded multiemployer union pension plans, including termination where appropriate. The PBGC’s refusal to use such authority helped cause its multiemployer program deficit to go from less than $500 million in 2008 to over $65 billion in 2017.
• Congress should increase the variable rate premium on underfunding and eliminate the per-participant cap in order to appropriately take into account risk and limit the degree to which well-funded pension plans must subsidize underfunded plans. Reforms should proportionately reduce the fixed per-participant premium to ease the burden on well-funded plans and also increase premiums on multiemployer plans to match single-employer plans.
Improving Access to Employee Stock Ownership Plans. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) are ERISA-covered employee retirement savings plans that allow employees to receive compensation in the form of equity in their employer business. These arrangements enable employees to formally participate as investors in how their employers’ businesses are run. And they also align employer-employee incentives by giving employees a greater financial stake in the success of their employers. With over half of small businesses owned by business owners over the age of 55, ESOPs also create advantageous succession opportunities that support the continuity of local businesses and regional economic