Summery of Major Changes Raise Concerns on Pension Bill - BEST BILL MONEY CAN BUY!!!!

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/business/19pension.html? 
hp&ex=1142744400&en=aedadeb0f2299749&ei=5094&partner=homepage

With a strong directive from the Bush administration, Congress set  
out more than a year ago to fashion legislation that would protect  
America's private pension system, tightening the rules to make sure  
companies set aside enough money to make good on their promises to  
employees.

...In the end, lawmakers modified many of the proposed rules,  
allowing companies more time to cover pension shortfalls, to make  
more forgiving estimates about how much they will owe workers in the  
future and even sometimes to assume that their workers will die  
younger than the rest of the population.

...The reform of the pension system is being undertaken at a time  
when it is reeling from a series of big bankruptcies, like those of  
United Airlines and Bethlehem Steel, that sent billions of dollars  
worth of obligations to the pension agency.  The agency's pension  
insurance is limited, and a growing number of these companies'  
employees have discovered to their dismay that their benefits exceed  
the limits and that they will simply lose part of the money they had  
been promised.

...Boehner, Republican of Ohio and the new House majority leader who  
was one of the driving forces behind pension reform, defended the  
House bill, arguing that many specific measures, particularly those  
phasing in the new rules slowly, were necessary.

...The law that Congress wants to amend was enacted in 1974 after a  
series of scandals in the auto industry in which employees of dying  
companies like Studebaker and Packard discovered that little or  
nothing had been set aside for their pensions.

...From the start of the legislative process, lobbyists representing  
a wide swath of American business, including those from the United  
States Chamber of Commerce, the American Benefits Council and the  
Erisa Industry Committee (which represents large companies with  
pension plans), argued for easing the burden on companies by allowing  
them more latitude in estimating how long their workers would live,  
for example, and what they would need to set aside for future payouts.

...The Senate bill would also help recover more than $1 billion of  
benefits that thousands of pilots for Braniff, PanAm, Eastern, United  
and other airlines have lost in bankruptcy cases going back as far as  
the 1980's.

...Lampert, chairman of Sears Holdings, which is responsible for the  
pension plans of employees at Kmart and Sears, complained that his  
company's pension insurance premiums were going up by 60 percent,  
"not in order to address any risk associated with Sears, but rather  
to make up for the difficulties of other companies."

...Lautenberg, a Democrat from New Jersey (where Prudential has its  
headquarters), that the companies which are more than 15 percent  
overfunded should be allowed to remove some of the surplus and use  
the money to buy health insurance for retirees.

...Robert DeFillippo, a Prudential spokesman, said that the provision  
would improve pension security because in exchange for the ability to  
take more money out of the pension fund, the company would be  
required to handle the remaining money in the pension fund much more  
carefully.

..."The Senate advice provision does little more than restate current  
law, which has left workers to fend for themselves without the type  
of quality advice they so desperately need," he said.

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