Sen. Sherrod Brown wants pension fix included in coronavirus relief bill – cleveland.com

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown wants the latest coronavirus relief bill thats working its way through Congress to include his longtime priority of bolstering multi-employer pension plans whose shaky financial status threatens the retirement of 1.3 million workers and retirees around the nation.

An estimated 60,000 Ohioans participate in affected pension systems that cover pools of union members who work for different companies in industries like trucking, mining and construction. They include the Teamsters Central States Fund, and others for ironworkers, carpenters, bakers and confectioners. Many ran into trouble when the tech stocks they bought took a nosedive around 2000 as retirements swelled and the number of active workers paying into the plans decreased.

Retirement benefits for workers in some of the affected plans have been cut by as much as 70 percent. Some of the companies that paid into the plans also went bankrupt, which increased the amount surviving companies had to pay. Coronavirus worsened the pension plans financial picture as more money-losing companies stopped contributing, said Brown.

His bill would establish a Treasury Department agency called the Pension Rehabilitation Administration that would issue low-rate bonds and loan the proceeds to beleaguered pension plans. Doing so would put the pension plans on solid footing for 30 years and ensure they can meet their obligations to current retirees and workers, said Brown.

His proposal would also increase the maximum Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation insurance amount and require every plan that gets assistance to file regular status reports with the PGBC and congressional committees to protect retiree benefits and prevent problems from happening again.

Brown said implementing his bill would cost $65 billion over 10 years, but doing nothing would cost $250 billion in that period by increasing costs for social welfare programs retirees will have to use if their pensions are cut. He said workers covered by the affected pension plans gave up dollars at the bargaining table in exchange for contributions to this pension fund for the promise of a secure retirement.

If the whole system collapses, it wont just be retirees who feel the pain, said Brown, who has spent half a decade seeking a fix for the problem. Current workers will be stuck paying into pensions they will never receive, small businesses will be left drowning in pension liability that they cant afford to pay, workers will lose jobs and businesses forced to close up shop. Every year that Congress puts off fixing this, the problem gets more expensive to solve.

The House of Representatives passed a bill to address the problem in 2019, but the Senate did not act. Brown said Republicans who controlled the Senate at that time opposed his approach to solving the problem. If the bill were to go through the regular approval process, Brown said it would require 60 votes for passage instead of the simple majority needed if it is included in the coronavirus package.

He said his pension language is already included in the coronavirus relief legislation that is being drafted in the House of Representatives. Brown, who chairs both the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Finance Committees pension and social security subcommittee, said he will do his best to ensure it is also in the Senates bill.

With the new president, we finally have an opportunity to get this done, said Brown.

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Sen. Sherrod Brown wants pension fix included in coronavirus relief bill - cleveland.com