Apart from discussing the RESA legislation, witnesses and Senators at a Finance Committee meeting spoke about the pressing need to address severe funding shortfalls faced by some union pension plans.
The mediation program now includes fiduciary disputes; opposing parties entering into the mediation program are connected with “neutral, professional and independent” mediators.
Representative Richard Neal has introduced a bill with bipartisan backers that would take several steps towards solving the union multiemployer pension funding crisis.
A vote on solutions was supposed to take place by today, but the co-chairmen of the Joint Select Committee on the Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans say they need more time to finish their work, given the scope of the challenge.
Multiemployer pension plan insolvencies will obviously be harmful to the participants and beneficiaries of the plans in question, but the loss of the significant economic momentum provided by retirees spending their pension plan assets could also harm the wider economy.
Favorable equity market and interest rate forces resulted in a 2% increase in the average U.S. pension plan funded status during April.
The financial crisis resulted in severe declines in the funded status of most U.S. corporate pension funds resulting in almost universal pension deficits; companies’ various responses to the challenge offer some food for thought.
Adjustments made to the corporate tax rate, repatriation of offshore cash and interest rate deductibility all are likely to have immediate effects on the credit markets—and by extension, on institutional investors’ fixed-income portfolios.
Under the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, the bicameral committee is charged with improving the solvency of multiemployer pension plans and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation.