A bill to prop up financially ailing multiemployer pension plans advanced in Congress yesterday as an influential House panel approved a proposal that would protect benefits promised to more than a million workers nationally, the Boston Globe reported. The measure, introduced in January by Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), was passed by the Ways and Means Committee on a 25-to-17 vote along party lines. The full House of Representatives is expected to approve it later this month. But with some committee Republicans calling it a “federal bailout,” it remains unclear if the bill will be taken up in the GOP-controlled Senate. The bill would create a new agency within the Treasury Department called the Pension Rehabilitation Administration to issue government bonds that would finance loans to underfunded multiemployer pension plans. More than 120 multiemployer plans covering 1.3 million workers and retirees are underfunded by a total of $48.9 billion, and have told regulators they could slip into insolvency within 20 years, according to a report last year by the pension consulting firm Cheiron Inc. Such plans typically draw contributions from groups of mostly small businesses.
