[Washington Examiner] House Democrats planning a new and sweeping economic relief package to respond to the coronavirus say they’ll include federal aid for troubled union pensions.Democrats have just begun drafting the relief bill, which they said would include enhanced family paid leave, more money for food stamps, and new worker safety requirements.
The pension bailout, if included in the measure, could cost tens of billions of dollars if it matches a pension relief package the House passed last year.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters she believes President Trump has signaled interest in aiding troubled pension programs but that it was excluded from the $2.2 trillion package signed into law last week because Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, did not want it in the bill.
"President Trump was actually supportive, but Mitch McConnell was not," Pelosi told reporters. "And so, he said we'll save it for the next bill. Well, here's the next bill."
House Democrats earlier this month introduced an economic relief package, but it was rejected by Senate lawmakers, who negotiated the $2.2 trillion bipartisan deal with the Trump administration.
The sidelined House proposal included the language in the House-passed Butch Lewis Act, a multiemployer pension bailout measure with a nearly $100 billion price tag. It would provide low-interest loans to the nation’s most underfunded union pension plans to help them stave off looming insolvency, and it would provide an additional $71 billion in direct cash assistance to those struggling pension plans. The measure would help ensure pension benefits for 1.3 million workers.
Pelosi did not indicate this week whether the draft of the new economic relief bill will include the Butch Lewis Act, but a Democratic aide confirmed it, acknowledging the plan would have to be bipartisan.
"Our proposal is the Butch Lewis Act, but, more importantly, we need and want multiemployer pension reform that works," a senior Democratic aide told the Washington Examiner. "We are not so committed to an approach that we can’t negotiate a solution."
The House-passed bill won support from dozens of House Republicans, but it never received consideration in the Senate.