It wasn't that long ago that Congress passed legislation intended to prevent the collapse of multiemployer pension plans and the federal insurance program that partially guarantees participants' benefits. The 2014 law, among other things, gave financially distressed plans the right — after securing regulatory approval — to cut benefits to prevent their insolvency.

While that option clearly would be a painful one, keeping benefits intact would be far worse. Some financially distressed plans surely would fail and participants would see their benefits slashed to a fraction of what was promised, even with protection by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

Even that limited federal benefit guarantee would overwhelm the PBGC's hugely underfunded multiemployer pension insurance program, ultimately leading to its collapse and some plan participants losing their pension benefits entirely.

The 2014 law was supposed to buy time for Congress to develop long-term legislation to provide a better future for multiemployer plans and the PBGC's insurance program, but that scenario now seems unlikely to develop. That's thanks to the Treasury Department's rejection of an application by the Central States Pension Fund to cut benefits.

The plan is so underfunded, by roughly $17 billion at the end of 2014, the most recent year information is available, that its collapse not only would be a financial disaster for participants, but also the PBGC's financially strapped insurance fund. We hope lawmakers do not allow that to happen, and we think there are several approaches for Congress to consider.

One should be a re-examination of the 2014 law provision in which financially distressed plans must get Treasury Department approval to cut benefits and then, as happened in the Central States case, allowing plans to walk away if regulators reject a plan's proposal.One possible change in the law would be establishing a mandatory arbitration system in which distressed plans and the Treasury Department have to keep talking until a benefit cut agreement is reached.

Fortunately, time is on everyone's side, up to a point. As troubled as it is, the Central States plan is not in imminent danger of going broke, and the PBGC's multiemployer program will not run out of money in the immediate future. But the time for lawmakers to examine the issue is now.