Janet Dhillon
On Thursday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted to advance the nomination of Janet Dhillon to serve as the Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), which protects the retirement security of 31 million Americans in private sector pension plans.
Before the vote, Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, delivered remarks in support of her nomination: “If confirmed as the Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), Ms. Dhillon will be charged with leading an agency that desperately needs reform,” said Sen. Cassidy.
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“Under the Biden administration, PBGC was plagued by severe operational issues, costing taxpayers and putting Americans’ retirement plans at alarming levels of underfunding. PBGC mismanaged the rollout of Democrats’ 2021 pension bailout, failing to implement important safeguards that ensured plans’ applications did not include dead participants.”
In the most “egregious case,” said Sen. Cassidy, President Biden approved the $36 billion PBGC bailout, as part of the American Rescue Plan, to the financially troubled Central States Pension Fund in 2022, when it discovered later that $127 million of that relief was paid to 3,479 dead participants in the plan.
Related: House launches probe of PBGC pension bailout over $127M that was ‘improperly’ paid
A House probe was launched into the PBGC in 2024, in which members of a House Committee alleged it failed to stop funds from going to deceased plan participants, even though the PBGC asserts that the funds were not "improperly" paid. However, The Teamsters pension fund, which manages the Central States Pension Fund, later was forced to return the money to the Treasury.
“PBGC also failed to provide timely technical assistance to pension plans experiencing significant financial troubles,” said Sen. Cassidy. “These delays threatened those plans’ financial situation, making it more likely that either workers would not get their pension, or Americans would be on the hook for another bailout.”
Dhillon, who joined the Department of Labor in March as senior counselor in the office of the DOL solicitor, previously served as the Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under President Trump’s first term, when she “secured more than $535 million in recoveries for victims of workplace discrimination,” said Cassidy.
Alice Maroni is currently serving as Acting Director of the PBGC.
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Lynn Cavanaugh
Lynn Varacalli Cavanaugh is Senior Editor, Retirement at BenefitsPRO. Prior, she was editor-in-chief of the What's New in Benefits & Compensation newsletter. She has worked for major firms in the employee benefits space, Vanguard and Willis Towers Watson, as well as top media companies, including Condé Nast and American Media.
