Business Pushing Pension Change

[cthrumatrix]

Business Pushing Pension Change
Firms Seek to Avoid Making Large Payments to Funds
By Albert B. Crenshaw
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 2, 2003; Page E01


As Congress returns to work from its August recess this week, business lobbyists will be angling for quick action to overhaul the pension-funding system.

In theory, legislators have until the end of the session to resolve a multibillion-dollar question of how businesses must calculate their pension liabilities. That's when a temporary provision that papered over the problem for two years expires. If nothing is done, many of the nation's largest companies will be forced to make big cash contributions to their pension funds in 2004.

The effective deadline for action, however, is even sooner, said Janice Gregory of the ERISA Industry Committee, an organization of large employers. That's because companies begin budgeting in the fall and need to know where their pensions stand well before the end of the year.

The companies, and some experts, argue that the big contributions that could be required are unnecessary. They say that forcing businesses to make such contributions would gobble up cash that might otherwise go to purchases of plant and equipment, boosting the struggling economy. But others see the underfunded pensions, which are insured by the federal government, as a ticking time bomb that could explode into a crisis reminiscent of the savings and loan troubles of the late 1980s.

snip..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12184-2003Sep1.html

Translation.... pension agreements entered into years ago by companies cost money...recalc the pension... employees lose.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. This isn't surprising

I knew thirty years ago that there would be a financial train wreck when we Boomers started retiring. Personally, I don't see a time when I will be able to afford to stop working, and I have no credit card debt-only land payments (five years to go)and a car payment(seven months to go). I really feel sorry for those who have a larger debt load than me. I hope that they all wake up and vote Democratic before Bush ruins the country even more and sends it into Depression.