Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, December 8, 2022
Joe Biden is intent on keeping union voters in the Democrat stable. And he is using his employers’ tax dollars to do it.
Team Biden plans on spending $36 billion of taxpayer funds to bail out a Teamsters union pension plan that is projected to run out of money in 2025.
The taxpayers funds going to the Central States Pension Fund make it the largest-ever federal bailout of a pension plan.
The funds are coming from the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package passed earlier this year. Team Biden included $86 billion in the package to aid failing pension plans.
“The Biden-Democrats $1.9 trillion Covid bill was a super PAC to help elect Democrats, financed by me and you,” Washington Times correspondent Rowan Scarborough noted in a Facebook post.
Pension plans can apply for federal grant funding from the Covid relief funds, which would be used to pay retirement benefits to workers. Multi-employer plan sponsors can apply for the aid through 2025, and the funds must be invested in investment-grade bonds.
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley blasted the bailout, calling it a “blank check with no measures to hold mismanaged plans accountable.”
A White House fact sheet previewing Biden’s announcement on Thursday said the money will ensure 350,000 union workers and retirees will have their benefits remain solvent through at least 2051.
The Central States Pension Fund, established in 1955, provides benefits to union members in the trucking, car haul, warehouse, construction, food processing, dairy, and grocery trucking industries.
The Central States Pension Fund has $7.4 billion in assets, according to its most recent quarterly financial report. It is spending over $2 billion per year more than it is taking in from contributions.
Other pension plans have warned they will run out of money soon.
A report by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) found that out of roughly 1,400 insured multi-employer pension plans, 124 have reported that they will run out of money within 20 years. Those 124 pension plans represent about 1 million workers.
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