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PBGC multiemployer pension program could be broke by 2025

Posted On: Aug. 4, 2016 12:00 AM CST

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.’s insurance program that partially guarantees benefits promised to multiemployer pension plan participants is projected to become insolvent by 2025, according to the latest government estimates.

In a report released Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office projects that between 2017 and 2026, the PBGC will pay out $9 billion in federally guaranteed benefits to participants in failed plans.

But the PBGC’s assets — generated by premiums multiemployer plans pay the agency and investment income the PBGC earns on those premiums — will amount to just $6 billion, leaving the PBGC $3 billion short of the amount needed to pay participants’ benefits.

And, the CBO projects, the PBGC’s funding shortfall will grow over worse over time.

From 2027 through 2036, the PBGC expects to be hit with $35 billion in claims from failed plans, with the agency able to pay only $5 billion of those claims from premiums paid by the multiemployer plans. The current premium is $27 per plan participant.

The CBO said the reasons for the coming failures of multiemployer plans and the resulting insolvency of the PBGC’s multiemployer insurance program include shrinking workforces, a decline in union membership in many industries and the move of many employers from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans, which are not covered by the PBGC.

The looming failure of the PBGC’s multiemployer pension insurance program, which guarantees participants benefits up to $12,870 a year has been noted by others as well, including the PBGC itself.

The PBGC said in a report released in June that its multiemployer pension insurance program was likely to run out of money by the end of 2025 in 57% of scenarios the agency ran.

So far, though, only a handful of federal lawmakers have expressed interest in developing legislation to try to shore up the agency’s insurance program, a lack of interest that concerns the Obama administration.

“We must address the funding and other challenges of the multiemployer insurance program before it is too late,” Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez said in a letter sent to Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, D-Wis., at the time the PBGC report was released.