Year-End Progress on the Legislative Front

The Mineworkers national pension and health plans were provided badly need Federal fiscal support in the year-end spending measure allowing use of the abandoned mine reclamation funds to shore up both the Mineworker national pension and health funds. This long-overdue measure will help save national mineworker pension benefits and will take the fiscal pressure of looming insolvency of that plan off the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s (PBGC) potential liability books. This measure also provides a path forward for Federal support for broader multiemployer pension reform – an essential prerequisite for effective reforms to remedy the 140 or so critical and declining plans without irredeemably crippling the vast majority of otherwise healthy plans by transferring the fiscal liability for the remedy to healthy plans.

Also, health plans got some good news with the long-awaited repeal of the Cadillac tax on health plans and the 2021 repeal of the health insurer tax that was levied on our fully insured health plans.