Problem with US Pension Plans....Underfunded (Marketwatch)

Gambling on a Great Bull's return
Commentary: Congress shoots craps with pension funds

By Chris Pummer, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 4:22 PM ET Oct. 14, 2003


SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- The resurgent stock market is failing to alleviate a $350 billion deficit in traditional U.S. pension plans, yet Congress is betting the farm that it eventually will.


The House voted 397-2 last week to relieve Corporate America of $26 billion in required pension-plan contributions over the next two years. The Senate is considering a three-year relief period for companies to replenish underfunded plans.

While current pensioners aren't at risk, employees, investors and taxpayers are being sold short by the House's failure to exact reforms in exchange for leniency on delinquent companies -- now deeper in pension debt than the total S&L bailout of $150 billion.

"This current system is cascading into an ever-worsening situation," said U.S. Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat who co-sponsored the stopgap bill. "In good times, companies reduce contributions to pension funds (based on rosy projected gains) and in bad times, they claim they can't make them. There's less and less stability in the system."

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http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/print_story.asp?print=1&guid={CA7C17A5-E657-4F1F-8EDD-7EFFDBF41AEE}&siteid=mktw

Watch the bill for less funding required by corps....or Taxpayer bailout.

as "premiums" (they are the folks that guarantee you defined benefit pension.)

4 more years of Bush and the Corporate race to the bottom in wages and benefits will be complete - as no defined benefit plans will survive - we will all get - if we are lucky - a small corporate match on our 401k --

And we will not have medical insurance (British Petrol has already announced this for US workers hired after 2004)- if we are lucky we will have a small dollar amount that can be applied to the profits of the insurance company or HMO of your choice --

And we will fight job loss with fewer environmental, workplace regulations, with fewer unions, with lower wages, with high paying jobs gone as we split into a very small middle class with an even smaller rich, and a very large working poor - regardless of anyone’s training or education.

And every year those that still work will get a new rebate check in August from a new Bush tax cut bill that also has the rich paying less and less - and our kids paying more and more via the National debt increases being in effect a birth tax.

And the classic dictators line of "me or chaos" - continuous war - end to civil rights for better "security", terror always - color coded!

And only benefits for the non-rich will be cut - as the tax take of the government, we will be told, can not provide social benefits - and payroll taxes can not be augmented by sales of SS Trust fund bonds as that would require an increase in the FIT tax so as to get the dollars to give the SS system when it wants to trade its US Gov Bond holdings for real cash so as to pay real benefits.

And the Bush Carlyle military industrial complex will join hands with the Bush oil and gas and pipeline folks to provide public dollars and our public army to buy items that are them used to defend their interests - all the while they take up off shore "headquarters" so as to avoid US Taxes, while outsourcing US jobs so as to avoid US Unions. Of course will be told to celebrate our new found "right to work", and "rejection of any class warfare on the rich" as the Bush family smiles, knowing the rich have won the class warfare battle.