The Joint Select Committee on Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans was formed in February 2018 to address the impending insolvency of a small subset of multiemployer pension plans, as well as projected insolvency of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s Multiemployer Fund. However, their focus expanded considerably to include issues affecting all multiemployer pension plans.
Ultimately, the Joint Select Committee dissolved at the end of 2018 without issuing a report or legislation. But multiemployer pension reform, including issues such as funding that affect all plans, remains a top focus of Congress in 2019. We need to ensure that Congress is able to provide meaningful tools to the plans currently facing insolvency, while not imposing additional cost or risk to the healthy plans that are currently succeeding in their mission to provide secure and reliable lifetime income to their participants, and providing Trustees of healthy plans with a new retirement security option in the form of the GROW Act.
