Obama and Congress Quietly Loots US Pension Plans with Little-Known Law


Government workers have feathered their own nests by giving themselves very health defined retirement plans that guarantee a healthy sum to retired government workers, regardless of the economic situation or a shortfall of funds. But workers in the private sector are simply unsuspecting pigeons, ripe for the plucking.

You see, while retirees were napping last year, Congress and President Barack Obama were quietly stealing from their pension plans by enacting a little-known law called MAP-21.
Hidden in the wording of a new transportation bill, the act allows big companies to slash their contributions to pension funds.
The number of companies defaulting on their pension plans could balloon and bankrupt the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. (PBGC) insurance program – leaving retirees out in the cold.
In 2012, the government faced a shortfall between current gas taxes and projected highway spending.The bill – titled Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century or MAP-21 – lets companies change how they calculate how much they need to fund pension plans.

MAP-21 lets employers put less money in their pension plans by allowing them to value their liabilities – what they have to pay in to fund pensions – using higher interest rates instead of current, low rates.

You see, pension plan liabilities are higher when interest rates are low because returns from bonds and other investments are expected to return less. When rates are high, the returns are expected to be higher and the liabilities are reduced.

Allowing companies to contribute less to their plans raises revenue for the federal government.

The government is assuming MAP-21 will raise $9.5 billion over 10 years because it will get more tax revenues from higher wages of current workers.

MAP-21 is squarely targeted at traditional defined benefit (DB) pension plans. These are plans funded by the companies to provide employees with a source of income after retirement.

It is no wonder that the public is so skeptical of the government. They are busy debating who can use what bathroom and locker room, while thousand upon thousands of retirees could see their retirement funds go up in smoke. The enumerated responsibilities of the federal government are few, but they do include helping protect the general welfare of the nation’s citizens, yet they seem to find countless ways to worsen the situation for most people, all while increasing the amount of money that is taken for various and sundry projects.

It is coming time for the nation to rise up and retake the nation. If that requires a physical revolution, so be it, but the so-called public servants have become the masters, and the people are merely beasts of burden to supply the wants and needs of government officials. It is high time to reduce their numbers by whatever means is necessary.

Source: moneymorning.com



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