| The stock market reaches record highs while corporations cut back or eliminate pension funds. Once again, as the Republican government sits idly by, money earned by American workers is redirected from those workers to the idle rich. |
| [T]he bill now being completed in a House-Senate conference committee, rather than strengthening the pension system, would actually weaken it, according to a little-noticed analysis by the government’s pension agency.
The agency’s report projects that the House and Senate bills would lower corporate contributions to the already underfinanced pension system by $140 billion to $160 billion in the next three years. That shortfall raises the specter of more pension plans failing, pushing their liabilities on to the government In a letter to shareholders last week, Edward 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.” Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio and the new House majority leader, who was one of the driving forces behind pension changes, defended the House bill, arguing that many specific measures, particularly those phasing in the new rules slowly, were necessary. Source: "Major Changes Raise Concerns on Pension Bill" By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH - NY Times - 3/19/06 |
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