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The $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package includes money for a plethora of interests you might expect, such as funding for healthcare, roughly $350 billion for states and stimulus payments. But some Democrats are also angling for taxpayer-funded relief money to bail out pension funds that have ballooned over the years while many of the companies in question continued to pay their top-ranking employees millions of dollars.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) protects pensions of private-sector employees. PBGC says their financing comes from the insurance premiums that employers pay, along from investments, assets of pension plans that they preside as trustee over, but not from taxes. While pensions took a hit during the pandemic due to falling interest rates, corporations underfunded their pensions long before the pandemic. And now, taxpayers might pick up the cost.
loans
cash grants to union-sponsored multiemployer pension plans that are otherwise headed toward insolvency.
About one in 10 multi-employer pension plans are in that situation thanks to stock market losses and declining numbers of active employees in the plans, and the wellbeing of up to 1.3 million union members and spouses is at stake. Butch Lewis would shore up declining pensions and restore benefits that were cut by some pensions in an effort to forestall insolvency.
If Congress does nothing, the Central States Teamster Pension is expected to run out of money in 2025. That would lead the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) itself to become insolvent. PBGC is a government insurance agency that guarantees pension benefits.
Operator
Greetings and welcome to the ArcBest s Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to David Humphrey, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
David Humphrey
Vice President of Investor Relations
Welcome to the ArcBest fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. Our presentation this morning will be done by Judy McReynolds, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of ArcBest; David Cobb, Chief Financial Officer of ArcBest. We thank you for joining us today. In order to help you better understand ArcBest and its results, some forward-looking statements could be made during this call. As we all know, forward-looking statements by their very nature are subject to uncertainties and risk. For more complete discussion of factors that could affect the company s future results, please refer to the forward-looking statement section of the company s earnings press release and the compan