Retirement Pension Cut for 10 Million in the Budget Deal.

http://www.ncpssm.org/EntitledtoKnow/entryid/2099/congress-sends-millions-of-retirees-a-holiday-present-an-historic-pension-cut

What Bullshit!  Not one hearing on this.  I think it will just get worse when the Republicans take over.  This is just the beginning.  I hope President Obama uses his Veto Pen.

Posted in Aging Issues, Max Richtman, pensions, Retirement, Social Security By NCPSSM

Tucked into the massive spending bill Congress passed this weekend was legislation that reversed 40 years of federal law protecting retirees’ pensions.  The change will allow benefit cuts for up to 10 million workers, many of them part of a shrinking middle-class workforce in businesses such as construction and trucking. There wasn’t a single Congressional hearing on the plan before it was slipped into the spending bill, outraging senior’s advocates...including NCPSSM.
“Allowing plans to break the fundamental ERISA promise - that pensions paid to retirees and their surviving spouses will not be reduced - represents an extreme response to a problem that can be addressed through other means by strengthening the funding of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. 

‘It bothers me no end that we have Congress and legislators that think that the proper way to correct problems that banks and corporations made is to take it out on the workers,’ said Dave Cook, president of Local 655 of the United Food and Commercial Workers.”  St. Louis Post Dispatch

The Pension Rights Center has a calculator on its website that lets retirees under age 75 see how much their pensions might be reduced under the bill.