Reply #36: 1,000 pages?!?!? So, what else is in there?

[54anickel]

Pension act won't hold water
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/opnOPN16080406.htm

The Pension Protection Act would not pass a truth-in-advertising test. It's not that the big pension bill Congress is poised to enact -- it's more than 900 pages long -- doesn't protect any pensions. The airline industry, in particular, got most of what it wanted. Some other ailing pensions may get a temporary reprieve. It's just that millions of Americans, with all good reason, are worrying that the pension they've earned through years of loyal work won't be there when they retire.

The pension act began as an effort to keep the government's pension-insurance agency from having to assume the obligations of too many teetering plans, a liability that lawmakers feared would lead to a savings-and-loan-style taxpayer bailout. It has ended up as no bulwark against the erosion of the traditional company-based pension -- the only sort, other than Social Security, that guarantees a fixed income in retirement.

Instead, the measure likely will have a topsy-turvy effect. It will entice more corporations to drop their healthy pension plans, while simultaneously bolstering the save-for-yourself version of retirement. Congress has now become a powerful booster in corporate America's relentless drive to shift the financial risk and responsibility of old age onto workers themselves.

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The cost of extending the retirement tax breaks, without offsetting spending cuts, is an estimated $52.6 billion between 2007 and 2016, according to an analysis of congressional data by the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The biggest chunk of this money would flow to taxpayers with incomes of $1 million or more. Money drained away now will not be available later, when Medicare and Social Security are expected to need an infusion of cash to finance the retirement of the baby boom generation.

So the Pension Protection Act is likely to shrink traditional pension coverage, hasten the shift of the retirement burden to workers and undermine the government's future ability to shore up Social Security and Medicare. It is a remarkable feat of legislative engineering, with all the strength of a New Orleans levee.

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