Susan Muffley Act of 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, this amendment is simple and straightforward. It requires the Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation within 1 year after the date of enactment to issue a public request for information regarding ways to ensure the long-term solvency of the PBGC's insurance programs, and then within 2 years after the date of enactment, the Director shall issue a report to congressional committees with recommendations on how to ensure the long-term solvency of the insurance programs.

As my colleagues know, the PBGC administers two insurance programs, one for multiemployer pensions and the other for single-employer pensions. PBGC's multiemployer program has been on the brink of insolvency. It was projected to run out of money in just a few years, but thanks to the Biden administration and congressional Democrats stepping up and passing the American Rescue Plan last year, millions of Americans' pensions have been saved.

Because the law requires participating businesses to pay into those failing plans until the businesses go broke, tens of thousands of businesses have been saved, and the solvency of the PBGC's multiemployer program has been extended for at least 30 more years.

For the single-employer program, the PBGC's most recent annual report indicates that it is financially healthy, with a positive net position of over $30 billion at the end of fiscal year 2021 compared to just over $15 billion at the end of fiscal year 2020. So, fortunately, it is not at the near-term risk of becoming insolvent.

A few years ago, I had the honor of being one of the four House Democrats selected for a special committee charged with addressing the multiemployer pension crisis. We tried to address the immediate crisis facing multiemployer pension plans with their participants and employers while also considering other long-term reforms to pension programs, but unfortunately we could not reach any agreement before the clock ran out.

Now that congressional Democrats and the Biden administration have solved the immediate crisis, and it looks like we can solve this crisis, we should take action to ensure that this doesn't happen again. We will do this by getting policy recommendations from the PBGC on how we can ensure long-term solvency of both insurance programs and avoid the possibility that 20 years from now pension plans would again be on the brink of insolvency.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to close.

Madam Speaker, the distinguished ranking member pointed out that the saving of the multiemployer pension fund would cost about $90 billion. That is right.

What she omitted was that estimates of doing nothing with the people losing their pension, they would pay less in income taxes, they would use more social services, and the Federal Government was on the hook for $170 billion if we had done nothing. In other words, we would have to spend $80 billion more to help the people who lost their pensions and the businesses that went broke trying to save those pension plans.

But in any case, Madam Speaker, the time to fix the roof is when the Sun is shining. We have gotten past the crisis. Let's find out what we need to do to avoid the possibility that these pension funds might be back here 20 years from now in a state of failure.

We need to make sure we fix it. Let's get these recommendations. That is why this amendment is so important that it will guarantee getting the information so we can fix these plans once and for all.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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