The Left’s Not-So-Secret Agenda for Bailing Out Union Pensions

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Heritage Foundation:

The administration and congressional democrats are teaming up to force a taxpayer bailout of private unions’ underfunded and over-promised pension benefits.

 

On May 6th, the Treasury rejected a plan by the Central State Teamsters trucking union to reduce some of its pension benefits to prevent the plan from going belly up within a decade. And on May 25th, Senate Democrats sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell calling for Congress to “protect” the United Mineworkers’ of America’s (UMWA) health and pension benefits by passing the Miners Protection Act (S.1714), and to “address” troubled union plans like Central States.

 

“Protect” and “address” are code for bailout.

 

These proposals would bail out select, and politically influential, private-sector union pension plans. Half-a-billion a year for the United Mineworkers’ of America or even a couple billion a year for Central States may not seem all that significant, but it would open the bailout floodgates to more than $600 billion in unfunded pension promises across private union plans. And although single-employers have far less political clout than the unions, they hold another $800 billion in unfunded pension promises that could fall to taxpayers.

 

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According to the Democrats’ letter, “We [Congress, using taxpayer dollars] have a responsibility to the American people to solve the real problems they face every day.”

But these real problems were caused by reckless and irresponsible union members and pension plan trustees who paid out benefits to workers that didn’t earn them and promised far more in future benefits than they set aside to pay them.

Unions—not Congress or taxpayers—made promises that they cannot keep and the unions—not taxpayers—must be held accountable for those promises.

Yet, the Miners Protection Act would give the UMWA—a select, coal miner’s union pension plan—direct access to nearly half a billion dollars per year in taxpayer funds.