Assistance to Troubled Union Pensions Top Priority for Treasury

Issuing guidance for providing financial assistance to troubled union pension plans is the top priority for the Department of the Treasury, an agency official said Wednesday.

“This is a big project,” Harlan Weller, a Treasury senior actuary, said at the American Bar Association’s 2021 May Tax Meeting, which is being held online. The Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the $86 billion cost of the assistance does “create some attention to these issues,” Weller said.

A controversial provision in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) allows the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to provide grants to troubled multiemployer pension plans, which ...