Democratic Socialists want a taxpayer bailout for union pension plans
Not content with the multi-billion-dollar bailout of pensions included in the American Rescue Plan passed earlier this year, Democratic Socialists are now demanding that taxpayers rescue the pension plans of their union buddies.
After Donald Trump and the Republicans joined Democrats in March 2020 to create the largest redistribute-the-wealth stimulus bill in history with the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the unibrow immediately turned their attention to Nancy Pelosi’s $3 trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act.
However, with the 2020 election on the horizon, both parties pretended to be concerned about their record-breaking spending during the early days of COVID tyranny, leading Republicans and Democrats to negotiate a “reduction” in spending along with a name change, but not until after the election was over.
So, in March 2021, Joe Biden put his signature on the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (formerly known as HEROES Act), with a promise to spend trillions more on so-called “infrastructure.” With the successful passage of their modified edition of the HEROES Act, taxpayers were put on the hook for billions of dollars to begin bailing out pension plans run by Big Union.
But the American Rescue Plan was only intended to be a down payment, which is why Democratic Socialists are demanding new legislation to bailout their union buddies (excerpts via TheHill.com):
Democrats now assert their bailout of multiemployer union pension plans in March’s American Rescue Plan Act was deeply flawed and are demanding the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) rescue multiemployer union pension plans from the act’s botched rescue. Democrats’ admission this bailout will cost much more than advertised should raise concerns about the real costs of the third massive bill they are rushing to enact this year with new social spending schemes.
Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is leading several Democratic senators in a letter demanding PBGC rewrite the flawed rescue to provide untold billions more in taxpayer handouts. Their primary grievance is that act’s bailout is based on 5.5 percent annual investment returns, which PBGC is correctly insisting on. Democrats imposed this requirement in order to misleadingly claim they were saving multiemployer union pension plans through 2051, without providing enough taxpayer funds to do so. But, as Democrats now acknowledge, such returns are very unlikely given market conditions. (emphasis mine)
Like pretty much every other response to COVID when it came to advancing their Marxist ideology while destroying liberty, Democratic Socialists used the so-called pandemic to push for the America Rescue Plan, calling it necessary to protect the proletariat against greedy big businesses who might try to profit from the situation. However, union pension plans were in trouble way before COVID arrived on the scene.
After passing the bill to find out what’s in it (H/T Nancy Pelosi), we learned the details contained in the American Rescue Plan, including the part that provides bailouts for the pension plans of Biden’s union buddies, beginning with public employees.
*Note: I warned in June 2020, when the Democratic Socialist with an “R” after his name was still in office, that this would happen in response to coronavirus hysteria.
When governors and mayors shut down their economies in response to COVID, they not only destroyed the incomes of small businesses and entrepreneurs, they destroyed much of their own income as well. And while this obviously impacted their day-to-day cashflow, it made a crisis that existed before coronavirus — unfunded and underfunded public employee pensions — even worse.
“Their shaky financial foundations were in fact set long ago—through unsustainable obligations like retirement benefits for public employees, excessive borrowing, and deferred maintenance of public buildings and infrastructure. The result has been a long-building budget imbalance now estimated in the trillions of dollars.”
~ John Locke Foundation President John Hood
Democrats claimed at the time that state bailouts included in the HEROES Act wouldn’t be used to address pension shortfalls, but the bill contained no restrictions on how the money could be spent. So, when Democrats successfully passed the revised version of the legislation (American Rescue Plan) shortly after assuming control of Washington, taxpayers were put on the hook for bailouts for public employee pensions.
However, even if such a limitation were expressly spelled out, the fungibility of money along with some creative bookkeeping ensures that Democratic Socialists and Joe Biden’s union buddies get the money they seek to bail out union pensions. Taxpayer financing provided by Republicans to pay for abortions performed by Planned Parenthood is an example of what this looks like.
Using California as an example, this excerpt from a Noozhawk.com op-ed by Peter Roff shows us exactly how this applies to the bailouts for public employee pensions:
In California, whenever someone calls 9-1-1, the fire department is most likely the first to arrive — not because it’s needed, but because it generates a bigger reimbursement from the feds.
Significant portions of city budgets are now dedicated to employee salaries and benefits. As pension obligations rise, if new revenue sources cannot be tapped by, for example, bringing emergency services “in-house,” critical programs are reduced or eliminated.
Those days must end. These obligations are driving states toward default — or were until the so-called stimulus passed.
California’s total estimated pension liability is something like $1 trillion. To balance its books, Sacramento had to get money from taxpayers in Florida, South Dakota, Utah and, other, better-managed states (through the COVID-19 stimulus) to close the [pension] gap. (emphasis mine)
In other words, California was able to bailout public employee pensions by reallocating money from non-pension accounts, which have been subsidized via massive reimbursements through COVID relief, courtesy of taxpayers across the nation.
Taxpayers should not be on the hook for the mismanagement of state governments, and they absolutely should not be forced to bailout the pension plans of public employees and unions.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Democratic Socialists or their Republican counterparts (i.e., “Conservative” Nationalists) will allow this fact get in the way of their agenda; not when there are votes to be bought, liberty to be destroyed, and power to be seized.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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