By James P. Hoffa
Published in the Detroit News, Dec. 6, 2017
open nassau otb on frank stronach day so tramsters may bet the below tracks at nassau otb where teamsters work or not as thy widh on. said day
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Sunday, April 1, 2018
| Track Code | Track Name | Entry | Scratch | 1st Post ET | 1st Post Local | Time Zone | Stakes Race(s) | Stakes Grade | T.V. Indicator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GG | GOLDEN GATE FIELDS | 48 | 24 | 3:45 PM | 12:45 PM | PDT | |||
| GP | GULFSTREAM PARK | 72 | 0 | 1:15 PM | 1:15 PM | EDT | |||
| SA | SANTA ANITA PARK | 72 | 24 | 3:30 PM | 12:30 PM | PDT | |||
| SUN | SUNLAND PARK | 120 | 0 | 2:30 PM |
“No one wants to see old, poor people penniless in retirement,” she said.
Mike Walden, a retired Teamster and the president of the National United Committee to Protect Pensions, has led fellow retirees to Washington for several years to pressure members of Congress to fix the problem. Retirees, already squeezed by living on a fixed income, are frustrated at the prospect of seeing their benefits reduced or eliminated if Congress does not act, he said. “I don’t think they understand, when they take money away from us, how much they’re going to hurt the economy.”
Mr. Walden called the creation of the committee a “meaningful step” to soothe nervous retirees. “It’s been way too long — just talk, talk, talk, talk,” he said.
To succeed, the committee must navigate Washington’s aversion to anything that resembles a bailout, particularly as the government is running large deficits that are projected to grow $7 trillion over the next decade — and when many Republicans see unions as political enemies.
And Congress has already tried to help these plans, with little success. In 2014, the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act was enacted to help funds develop rescue plans, including by reducing benefits to retirees. In 2015, Central States submitted such a plan to the Treasury Department, but it was rejected the following year on the grounds that the proposed benefit reductions were unlikely to help the fund avoid insolvency.
Mr. Brown and Representative Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts, a Democrat, have pushed an effort that would attempt to stabilize plans with 30-year loans from the Treasury Department, as long as plan managers could demonstrate the money would put them on a path to solvency — and not invest it in risky assets. Fiscal hawks, like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, warn that the bill could leave taxpayers responsible for as much as $100 billion if the loans are not repaid. Backers of the bill say taxpayers should not end up paying a dime.
“This is beyond party affiliation, this really cuts to the root of what retirement is going to look like,” said Mr. Neal, who will be a member of the special committee and has been working to recruit more House Republicans to support his proposal.
Mr. Neal has six Republican co-sponsors on his bill and said that several others have expressed support. A handful of Republican senators have also been engaged on the issue, including Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who said this month that she was pleased the spending bill “recognizes the urgent need to help tens of thousands of retired coal miners.”
The Trump administration has been largely quiet on the situation, but when asked about it at a congressional hearing last week, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, noted that it was a “significant” issue and promised to offer technical assistance to support any solution that lawmakers find.
As congressional negotiators homed in on a spending deal early this year, Mr. Brown pushed Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, to attach his pension language to the larger budget agreement. The bill establishes a process to ensure that if the commission produces a bill supported by a majority of its Democratic and Republican members, the Senate will vote on that bill before a new Congress convenes next year.
If concern over retirees is not enough to get lawmakers to act, those who represent pension funds hope that concern about the broader economy will. Michael D. Scott, executive director for the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans, projects that if all of the pension plans that are in “critical” and “critical and declining” condition go broke, the federal government would face a half trillion dollars in lost tax revenue over the next decade because of the taxes that the active funds currently pay.
“I think ultimately the government is going to look at how much tax revenue it is going to lose without a solution,” Mr. Scott said.
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