Bill Lee: “Congress authorized a group of coal miners' multiemployer pension plans under problematic rules, allowing them to…”

“Congress authorized a group of coal miners' multiemployer pension plans under problematic rules, allowing them to underfund the plans by over 70 percent, but all the while, those pensions still promised their workers full benefits, setting up unreasonable expectations for their return on investment. Inevitably, they have not made up the shortfall, and now the taxpayers are being asked to bail them out. In the very same bill in which we are bailing out the coal miners' pensions, we are authorizing a select group of community newspapers-- not all newspapers and not all media enterprises; just a select group of handpicked community newspapers--to follow the same practice, allowing them, once again, to underfund their workers' pensions while again promising them a full return on benefits. With this bill, we are rubberstamping the expectation that employers are free to raid their workers' promised retirement benefits for their own short-term gain and setting the precedent that the government will reward this bad practice by bailing them out when that inevitably becomes a problem. This bill, however, does include some good measures that I support, like repealing the medical device tax, fixing a tax provision that would unfairly subject churches to more taxes, and making retirement account reforms that allow Americans to access these funds in times of a particular need.…”