Low interest rates have led several major US trade groups to push Congress to reconsider the amount of money their members are required to feed into their pension funds — though similar requests have, in the past, helped lead to pension shortfalls such as those experienced by the flailing American Airlines.

It also comes at the same time as several major employers, including the Bank of America and General Motors, are moving away from their defined-benefit plans and moving more employees into 401(k) variants.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, companies are reacting to a provision in the new Senate highway bill that would recompute the formula by which they would calculate their contribution to pension funds, which might reduce their required input by billions.