U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin to Call for Pensions Fix on the Senate Floor Tonight
Without Congressional Action, the Retirement Benefits of 25,000 Workers and Retirees in Wisconsin Could Be At Risk
WASHINGTON, D.C. – This evening on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin will join her colleagues and call for passage of the Butch Lewis Act to secure the pensions of more than 1.5 million workers and retirees nationwide, including over 25,000 in Wisconsin.
In November 2017, Senator Baldwin joined colleagues in introducing the Butch Lewis Act to ensure Teamsters and thousands of other American retirees can keep the retirement they have earned so their families and livelihoods are not put at risk.
WHO:
U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-WI)
U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)
U.S. Senator Joe Donnelly (D-IN)
WHAT:
Floor Speeches Calling for Passage of Pensions Fix
WHERE:
Senate Floor
WHEN:
TODAY, January 16, 2018, 5:45-6:45 p.m. (CT)
Senator Baldwin is expected to speak between 6:15-6:30 p.m. (CT).
The Butch Lewis Act would:
· Provide financing to put failing pension plans back on solid ground to ensure they can meet their commitments to retirees today and workers for decades to come.
· Prevent a single dollar of cuts to benefits retirees have earned.
· Put safeguards in place so pension plans remain strong in order to be there for today’s workers when they retire.
The bill does so by allowing the Treasury Department to loan money, leveraged by safe investments, to pension plans to ensure that retirees and their families are guaranteed their promised benefits. This new legislation would put the pension plans back on solid footing, ensure they can meet their obligations to current retirees and workers for decades to come without cutting the benefits retirees earned, and safeguard them for the future.
Pension plans – including the massive Central States Teamsters Pension Plan and over 200 more plans impacting workers in every state in the country – are on the brink of failure and threatened by massive cuts. If nothing is done, these 200 multiemployer plans are projected to fail, many within the next 10 years. The result of significant cuts to these pensions would be economically devastating, as the retirement benefits of 1.5 million plan participants could be at risk, including 25,000 in Wisconsin who participate in the Central States Pension Fund. In 2015, multiemployer participants were paid $241 billion in wages and pension benefits and those participants paid over $35 billion in federal taxes and an additional $8.4 billion in state and local taxes.
If pension plans are allowed to fail, not only will employers no longer be able to pay promised benefits, but taxpayers would be at risk of having to pay billions when the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), the government sponsored insurance company for multiemployer pensions, has an exposure of $59 billion and is projected to become insolvent by 2025. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cost of backstopping the PBGC, should it fail, would be $101 billion dollars over 20 years.
Learn more about the Butch Lewis Act and why it’s needed HERE.
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.
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