Kaptur Leads Effort Calling on Treasury to Reject Devastating Pension Cuts
Workers and retirees currently facing cuts of 60% or more to earned benefits
WASHINGTON, D.C.— Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (OH-9), Congressman Richard M. Nolan, and 16 other members of Congress submitted a public comment to the Department of Treasury last night calling on Ken Feinberg, the department’s Special Master for Implementation, to reject a plan that would slash earnedpension benefits for hundreds of thousands of workers and retirees enrolledin the Central States Pension Plan.
“Simply put, America’s workers are entitled to the pensions they’ve earned over a lifetime of hard work,” write the letter’s authors. “The proposed cuts by Central States will affect about 270,000 people, many concentrated in the Upper Midwest, with a significant number of those retirees facing severe cuts of 50-70 percent—affecting not only individual workers and retirees but their entire communities as well.”
“Pensions are paychecks, not handouts,” Rep. Kaptur added. “If the United States of America could bail out Wall Street, whose risky behavior robbed pension funds of workers' hard earned benefits across our nation, surely we can find a way to restore retired workers' earned pensions. There are other solutions already working their way through Congress that don’t pick the pockets of workers and retirees to pay for financial losses for which they bear no responsibility. I am grateful for the support of Congressman Nolan and our colleagues in these efforts. I urge Special Master Feinberg to work with us to find a fairer and more equitable path forward.”
"Congresswoman Kaptur is to be commended for her hard work and outstanding leadership in helping ensure that hundreds of thousands of American workers receive the retirement benefits they've earned over a lifetime of hard work, and entrusted to Central States Pension Funds," Rep. Nolan said. "Make no mistake - we are going to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to fight these outrageous cuts. Big corporations that get into financial trouble should not be permitted to take their problems and failures out on employee pensions - especially while executives collect tens of millions of dollars in golden parachutes."
Rep. Kaptur is the sponsor of the Keep Our Pension Promises Act (H.R. 2844) in the House of Representatives. This legislation would repeal a provision in last year’s last-minute budget that opened the door to pension cuts, and would instead shore up the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation by closing two tax loopholes used almost entirely by wealthy estates to reduce their tax burdens. This legislation would protect the pensions of some 1.5 million workers enrolled in approximately 200 different multiemployer pension plans.
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