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The pension reform amendment would help the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. remain solvent by letting ailing multiemployer pension plans cut retiree benefits – so long as workers and retirees approve. One of its other key provisions eliminates the penalty on employers who increase their contributions to underfunded plans.

Opponents to the amendment lobbied hard this week, questioning the details of the proposal and why it was even up for a vote during a lame-duck session of Congress.

But in making his final case for the amendment, House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline, a Minnesota Republican, said the reforms were “critical” to avert a “looming pension crisis.”

“The multiemployer pension system is a ticking time bomb,” Kline said in a speech on the House floor. “A crisis is staring us in the face.”

He acknowledged there are some “shortcomings” in the plan. But said doing nothing will mean cuts in benefits for retirees, and that, with the amendment “retirees are better off than if we did nothing.”

Similarly, George Miller, a ranking California Democrat, said that the amendment was the “only available option to save these failing plans.”

He has repeatedly pointed out in recent days the provisions in the amendment were reviewed in “extensive hearings” over the last few years and that the amendment gives employees and retirees the opportunity to vote on whether to cut their own pension benefits. And there are some safeguards in place to exempt older retirees as well as the disabled.

Some unions actually want to be able to take such an action to save their multiemployer pension plans, but currently are forbidden from doing so, he said.

“They want to make these adjustments; the law says they can't,” Miller explained on the House floor.

“These plans are losing altitude every day,” he added. “Trust these workers enough … to make these decisions on their retirement.”

But opponents of the amendment reject such arguments.

“I urge my colleagues to oppose this poison-pill measure,” Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, said in a statement. “This rider undoes 40 years of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.”

“The process should have been a great deal more transparent,” Hastings added during a Rules Committee meeting. He claimed the amendment also “drastically cuts” pensions of retirees, and points out that plans are not in any immediate danger of insolvency.

Also, the Pension Rights Center claimed the cuts in pension benefits could, in some cases, exceed 60 percent of a participant's benefits.

Among those opposing the amendment is the AARP. It called the amendment the result of a “last-minute backroom deal.”

“After a lifetime of hard work to earn their pensions, retirees don't deserve to receive a bad deal, in which they've had no say, cut behind closed doors and excluding the very people who would be impacted most,” Joyce Rogers, an AARP vice president, warned in a statement.

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