Just because you're already retired doesn't mean Congress can't take your pension

[Another reason for the anger against the government. And why we need to elect more Democrats. ---Bozo]

Rss@dailykos.com (mark Sumner) · Friday, April 15, 2016, 12:44 pm

It’s one thing for the GOP to spend years working to take defined pension benefits away from workers still on the job, but at least those who have already retired should be safe. Only that's not the case.

Some 400,000 retirees who worked in the trucking, parcel delivery and grocery supply industries face drastic pension cuts on July 1 as a result of a little-noticed measure attached to a huge end-of-year spending bill passed in December 2014.

The provision in question goes after those whose retirement is funded through the Central States Pension Fund. That fund is projected to run low in a decade, a situation that would normally be addressed by the government’s Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which acts as an insurange plan for failing pensions. It’s there specifically so that workers don’t suffer when companies fail to make necessary contributions to funds or fund investments turn south. Only in this case, the 2014 bill makes sure that the government won’t step in. Instead, the bill slashes payouts from the fund.

James Lambert, 69, a former trucker, from Randolph, Ohio, was told his $2,200 monthly pension payment would be slashed to $1,200.

Bob Berg, 61 … was informed that his monthly payment would drop from $3,000 to $2,200.

And Judy Weeks, 62, ... would drop from $3,000 to $1,258.

These aren’t exactly princely sums. The highest payout originally meant getting by on $36,000 a year. But if you’ve planned your life around that payment, only to find it cut to $14,000 a year … That’s not just tough, that’s being thrown into poverty. In many cases it probably means being thrown out of a home. So how did such a bill get passed in the first place?

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