Speaker 1: It's the big take from Bloomberg News and I Heeart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm West Pasova today. Just how safe is that money
Speaker 1: in your pension plan? People around the country wake up
Speaker 1: every day wondering whether they've saved enough to provide for
Speaker 1: themselves and their families. Working a job that provides basic dignity,
Speaker 1: a good middle class job, you can raise a family.
Speaker 1: I'm a job that provides a dignified retirement, and we'll
Speaker 1: give you peace of mind. But the reality is, for
Speaker 1: so many people, the goalpost keep moving. Millions of Americans,
Speaker 1: including public employees and people working union jobs, are counting
Speaker 1: on a pension to provide them with a steady stream
Speaker 1: of income when they retire. But some corners of America's
Speaker 1: pension system have gotten a bit rickety. Pension plans can
Speaker 1: be underfunded or they underperform, and that's a problem even
Speaker 1: if you don't have a pension, because when they get
Speaker 1: into trouble sometimes the government has to step in and
Speaker 1: bail them out with taxpayer dollars. President Joe Biden, you
Speaker 1: heard just now, that's exactly what he did at the
Speaker 1: end of last year, given thirty six billion in federal
Speaker 1: funds to shore up the Union pension plan. Why is
Speaker 1: this happening and what can be done to fix it?
Speaker 1: By colleagues Neil Weinberg, Susanne Woolley and Kala Gardner are
Speaker 1: here to explain. Neil, Susanne, Akala, thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: Good to be here. Likewise, thanks for having us. Susanne.
Speaker 1: Let me start with you. Pensions have always been considered
Speaker 1: very safe. You didn't have to think about it. Your
Speaker 1: employer put away the money, and when you retired it
Speaker 1: was there for you. And yet in recent years, both
Speaker 1: public pensions and pensions run by private companies have run
Speaker 1: into some pretty rocky terrain. Can you tell us just
Speaker 1: what is the general landscape of what's happening with pensions? Sure?
Speaker 1: Sort of the holy grail of retirement for many people
Speaker 1: would be the defined benefit pension because you get, you know,
Speaker 1: a set amount of money every year for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. It's guaranteed. That has largely gone by
Speaker 1: the wayside in the private sector and it's been replaced
Speaker 1: by defined contribution plans. Yes, you're four O, one K
Speaker 1: and FOREI one case are great, but the returns aren't guaranteed.
Speaker 1: And with the old defined benefit plans they were managed
Speaker 1: by investment professionals, you know, big pools of money, and
Speaker 1: now you're four owen k you are all of a
Speaker 1: sudden expected to be the investment manager and handling all
Speaker 1: the risk for saving enough, you know, and saving in
Speaker 1: the right things for your retirements. So there's been a
Speaker 1: lot more risk foisted onto individual retirees in America and
Speaker 1: a lot of that safety and surety of a steady
Speaker 1: stream of income has been stripped away. And pensions, of
Speaker 1: course eliminated that risk because it, as you say, the
Speaker 1: money would just be there. But Neil, you've just written
Speaker 1: a big story about public pensions and how the investment
Speaker 1: professionals who used to run pensions that Suzanne was just
Speaker 1: talking about have now been replaced in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways by amateurs. Well, a lot of the pensions that
Speaker 1: serve state and local employees were set up around World
Speaker 1: War Two, in some cases well before that, and it's
Speaker 1: usually in state law that says the people who are
Speaker 1: going to be the directors of these pensions are people
Speaker 1: who are rank and file members. These are state employees, teachers, policemen,
Speaker 1: they are government officials, they are members of the public,
Speaker 1: and they are chosen largely because they're members of these group.
Speaker 1: They're not chosen because they know anything about investing. Over
Speaker 1: the last twenty years, these pension systems have gone from
Speaker 1: having a pretty plain, vanilla sort of portfolio of investments.
Speaker 1: It was government bonds and common stock too much more
Speaker 1: exotic things, private equity, hedge funds, private real estate. And
Speaker 1: the result is you have people who are not investment
Speaker 1: professionals who are overseeing an phenomenally complex, multibillion dollar investment systems.
Speaker 1: And this is a huge mismatch, which leads to the
Speaker 1: question of you know, who's guarding the handhouse. It's almost
Speaker 1: like it's parallel to the individuals who are now forced
Speaker 1: to manage, you know, a lot of investments and risks
Speaker 1: and are sort of pushed into being their own investment manager,
Speaker 1: and they don't have any background in this either. One
Speaker 1: of the really interesting things we were talking about recently
Speaker 1: is the fact that if want to invest in some
Speaker 1: of these so called alternative assets as an individual, you
Speaker 1: need to be accredited an accredited investor, meaning you have
Speaker 1: to have a certain net worth or a certain financial
Speaker 1: sophistication as deemed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The
Speaker 1: people who are overseeing these multibillion dollar pension systems are
Speaker 1: not in many cases accredited investors. They couldn't buy this
Speaker 1: stuff for their own portfolio, for their own retirement, but
Speaker 1: they're buying it for tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
Speaker 1: And what is an example of these alternative investments. This
Speaker 1: would be private equity or hedge funds. It could be
Speaker 1: private real estate, It could be something else that is
Speaker 1: exotic so called real assets. Yes, things like that. One
Speaker 1: of the key aspects of these investments is that they're
Speaker 1: opaque and they're not sort of easily tracked by the
Speaker 1: average individual. And also they tend to be more expensive
Speaker 1: than more standard investments, and that raises the question of
Speaker 1: you know, are you getting a much higher return for
Speaker 1: that investment that you're paying a lot of money for. Well,
Speaker 1: critics would argue that there's a lot of smoke and
Speaker 1: mirrors going on and the returns are not really that good.
Speaker 1: Supporters would say, you get what you pay for, although
Speaker 1: some people in the investment community say you get what
Speaker 1: you don't pay for in terms of expenses. So the
Speaker 1: upside is you can make a lot of money, big
Speaker 1: return on these investments. To downside, you can lose a
Speaker 1: lot when you're playing with people's retirements. That's pretty risky stuff.
Speaker 1: And I guess all of what you're saying raises the
Speaker 1: question is why are these funds not being run by
Speaker 1: the smartest investment minds. Why don't they just hire really
Speaker 1: great investment managers to manage this much money? Well, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of reasons. One, I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: these large pension systems tend to have very professional staff,
Speaker 1: and so many of these people who are working either
Speaker 1: on the staff of these state and local pensions, their consultants,
Speaker 1: their money managers. These are all financial professionals, but they
Speaker 1: are overseen by lay people who may not be in
Speaker 1: a great position to evaluate the advice they're given. When
Speaker 1: you have this many people's retirements at state, Obviously, the
Speaker 1: federal government takes in interest to make sure that a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't get stuck out in the cold.
Speaker 1: You cover the White House. What has the Biden administration
Speaker 1: would have passed administration's done to oversee all of this money?
Speaker 1: I would say even more than just the federal government,
Speaker 1: But like Joe Biden specifically has a vested interest in
Speaker 1: keeping union labor leaders happy. You know, he sort of
Speaker 1: ran his campaign really wanting to get Pennsylvania back after
Speaker 1: Trump wanted in sixteen, and so he's really sort of
Speaker 1: hedged his campaign as presidency, if you will, um sort
Speaker 1: of being this person who kind of walks the line
Speaker 1: between progressive politics but also appealing to people in the
Speaker 1: Midwest who have really been hit hard by you know,
Speaker 1: economic headwinds. And I think it's important to talk about
Speaker 1: that as well, because many of these money managers are
Speaker 1: dealing with the same issues that people on Wall Street
Speaker 1: in general are are dealing with. You know, last year
Speaker 1: we saw stocks have the worst years since two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, and so these are pretty widespread issues, and
Speaker 1: Biden has been really a consequential economic leader because of
Speaker 1: these headwins. Actually have a lot of voters in those
Speaker 1: states that you just mentioned who have mentioned plans are
Speaker 1: looking towards retirement wondering if the money is going to
Speaker 1: be there totally, and Biden sort of, you know, again,
Speaker 1: he wanted to to win Pennsylvania in and so his
Speaker 1: first big event was at a Teamsters union hall. So
Speaker 1: he's really been sort of continuing to do events with
Speaker 1: union leaders. We saw him in Boston just a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago with union leaders and then also in
Speaker 1: Oregon boosting Democratic candidates there for the mid terms. So
Speaker 1: he's really made an effort to sort of be seen
Speaker 1: um with unions like the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,
Speaker 1: and really felt like, you know, he's really prioritized these
Speaker 1: relationships and these allies because he wants them to come
Speaker 1: out and vote for him again. Obviously should he run
Speaker 1: for re election in four Neil, So we just you
Speaker 1: describe a situation where you have professional staff but run
Speaker 1: by amateur directors. Why not just have professionals period? Why
Speaker 1: did it happen that amateurs were in charge of this thing? Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of this goes back to state law that
Speaker 1: is many decades old, and I think the logic of
Speaker 1: this originally was, well, who is most affected by this?
Speaker 1: And obviously the answer is public workers, your fireman, your police,
Speaker 1: your teachers, the public employees who are professionals. It might
Speaker 1: be the treasurer or some other executive in the state
Speaker 1: government or the city government. And then you had members
Speaker 1: of the public. And in some cases these members of
Speaker 1: the public were sought out for some financial expertise. In
Speaker 1: many cases they were not how much money are we
Speaker 1: talking about invested in these public pension funds that you
Speaker 1: write about, We are talking about four trillion dollars is roughly,
Speaker 1: which is a lot of money. The largest system in
Speaker 1: the United States is the California Public Employees Retirement System
Speaker 1: commonly known as KELPERS, which at the last count had
Speaker 1: four hundred and forty eight billion dollars in assets. And
Speaker 1: so it was the idea that the people who aren't
Speaker 1: professional money managers but are in charge are kind of
Speaker 1: keeping an eye out on what's happening to be overseers
Speaker 1: in the sense that they have skin in the game,
Speaker 1: and so they're just trying to be honest brokers. Well,
Speaker 1: as these systems have evolved and the sort of division
Speaker 1: of labor has mutated as well, what you find is
Speaker 1: for most of these systems, job number one is deciding
Speaker 1: how to invest these billions of dollars. However, they also
Speaker 1: have a lot of other interests. If you are a
Speaker 1: public employee and you want representation, because these pension systems
Speaker 1: are involved in how long you have to work to
Speaker 1: have a pension, what is the final formula used to
Speaker 1: guarantee your pension, and a lot of other labor related issues.
Speaker 1: Now they don't have the authority to actually make all
Speaker 1: these changes, often its state legislatures, but they certainly want
Speaker 1: to weigh and they certainly want to seat at the
Speaker 1: table when these things are being discussed. As well as
Speaker 1: just the basic administration, sending out the checks, answering the phones,
Speaker 1: making sure the customer service is good for people who
Speaker 1: are working or people who are tired so they can
Speaker 1: get answers. So originally those were all sort of parts
Speaker 1: of the responsibility, but more and more, as these pots
Speaker 1: of money have increased in size and importance, it's become
Speaker 1: very much an issue of not only overseeing money, but
Speaker 1: overseeing money that's going into these expensive alternative investments. My
Speaker 1: conversation with a Kala, Neil and Suzanne continues after the break.
Speaker 1: For years and years, union workers have been driving trucks
Speaker 1: from factories of stores, bagging groceries, constructing the buildings and
Speaker 1: the bridges and the roads and use that we use
Speaker 1: every day, and so much more. Imagine if you're not
Speaker 1: a union worker, you have a good job, you're retiring,
Speaker 1: about to retire, and you find out your pension plan
Speaker 1: is gonna be cut. Imagine what that does to you.
Speaker 1: So We've just write how some of these very big
Speaker 1: pension funds are not run by investment managers. What are
Speaker 1: the effects of that, Neil, So have they run into
Speaker 1: trouble as a result of this? In some cases they have,
Speaker 1: And I think it would be a bit of a
Speaker 1: simplification to say, oh, well, they have lay people on
Speaker 1: their boards, therefore they've run into problems. There's been a
Speaker 1: multitude of problems. Some of this is demographic if you
Speaker 1: look at the number of working employees has gone way
Speaker 1: down compared to the number of retired employees. You've seen
Speaker 1: some changes in law which in some cases have made
Speaker 1: it more difficult for these pension systems. But clearly the
Speaker 1: problem of who is ultimately at the top of these
Speaker 1: systems is a real issue. And yes they do have
Speaker 1: professional staff, and yes they do have outside consultants and
Speaker 1: money managers. But arguably it is in the benefit of
Speaker 1: all those people to increase the complexity, maybe not to
Speaker 1: reduce the cost. They may not have the same interest
Speaker 1: as the overall system. You also have a system where
Speaker 1: if you have representatives for various groups on these boards,
Speaker 1: they may have an interest in representing the union or
Speaker 1: the politician who appointed them to the pension board. It
Speaker 1: might not be that their primary interest is to the
Speaker 1: whole pension system and making sure that it's run according
Speaker 1: to pardon the phrase, fiduciary duty. Let's put some numbers
Speaker 1: on this. How big a shortfall have some of these
Speaker 1: pension funds run into. It depends on which system you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Some systems are quite well funded and some
Speaker 1: systems are almost bankrupt. And there have been a few cities,
Speaker 1: including Chester, Pennsylvania, which recently declared bankruptcy, largely because of
Speaker 1: its pension obligations and inability to fund them. Overall, I
Speaker 1: think there's roughly a trillion dollars in money that is
Speaker 1: needed to fulfill promises that is not available. That's a
Speaker 1: trillion out of four trillion which they do have in
Speaker 1: their kitties. So it's a significant underfunding, you know, roughly,
Speaker 1: and it definitely got worse in twenty twenty two as
Speaker 1: markets tanked. To give a sense of scale in terms
Speaker 1: of underfunding, General Electric in twenty nineteen said it would
Speaker 1: freeze its plan for twenty u S employees and shift
Speaker 1: to a defined contribution plan a fowing K type plan
Speaker 1: to help produce the deficit of its underfunded pension by
Speaker 1: as much as eight billion. So a lot of private
Speaker 1: sector pension plans over the years have frozen their plans,
Speaker 1: meaning that the people that accrued benefits in those plans
Speaker 1: will get paid out eventually, but no one else who
Speaker 1: is joining the company as a new employee will be
Speaker 1: allowed into the pension plan. And for the most part,
Speaker 1: people who are still have that pension from you know,
Speaker 1: years of former work with the company, they won't accrue
Speaker 1: any more benefits. In the private sector, I think about
Speaker 1: twelve percent of employees have access to one of these
Speaker 1: traditional pension plans where you get a monthly check. It's
Speaker 1: considerably higher in the public sector. And public sector employers
Speaker 1: have also started to reduce the benefits for new employees.
Speaker 1: Often by law, they can't cut the benefits of previous
Speaker 1: employees existing employees. But if you become a teacher today,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get the same suite deal that
Speaker 1: the teachers a generation ago did. Right, They might cut
Speaker 1: your cost of living adjustment, you know, limit that in
Speaker 1: some way. People used to get retiree medical healthcare benefits.
Speaker 1: That was a really juicy perk and that has been slashed.
Speaker 1: And these private pension plans that you describe running into troubles,
Speaker 1: they are run by professionals. So how much of this
Speaker 1: has to do with the public pension structure which is
Speaker 1: complicated and has a lot of different hands in it,
Speaker 1: and it just being a very difficult thing to run
Speaker 1: a pension. It is a difficult thing to run a pension,
Speaker 1: and it probably doesn't help that in the private sector
Speaker 1: you have a law which basically says if a corporate
Speaker 1: pension plan is significantly underfunded, the company is obligated to
Speaker 1: put money in. In the public sector, this is all
Speaker 1: done on the state level and there is no national law.
Speaker 1: And in some cases you've had public sector pensions where
Speaker 1: the people who estimate how much is needed tell the
Speaker 1: state legislatures and the governor and so on how much
Speaker 1: they have to put in, and they are just ignored.
Speaker 1: So they, you know, just don't put the money in
Speaker 1: because as they have more pressing needs they need uh
Speaker 1: bridges and roads and schools. Kayla Niela is talking about
Speaker 1: how some of these public pensions have run into trouble.
Speaker 1: One very big one you recently wrote about where Joe
Speaker 1: Biden had to step in. Can you describe what happened there. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: So basically, the Central States Pension Fund was at risk
Speaker 1: of getting cut up to sixty of those monthly payouts
Speaker 1: to their members, and so Biden swooped in with this
Speaker 1: measure and the American Rescue Plan UM it's also known
Speaker 1: as the Butcher Lewis Act, and gave him thirty six
Speaker 1: billion dollars over for a long term period for them
Speaker 1: to start sort of replenishing their deficit to those users.
Speaker 1: So this was like a bailout exactly. And I think
Speaker 1: bailout is the word that Republicans would use because they've
Speaker 1: really criticized this measure and said, you know, this is
Speaker 1: not related to the pandemic, you know, as the American
Speaker 1: Rescue Plan was originally intended. But this was just a
Speaker 1: way for Biden to please union leaders. You know, they
Speaker 1: don't want to tell our own members that we're cutting
Speaker 1: your benefits. The interesting thing about Central States Pension Fund
Speaker 1: is it's a multi employer pension funds, so it's a
Speaker 1: group of multiple companies who are all sort of putting
Speaker 1: in money towards giving these monthly payments out to their members.
Speaker 1: And what kind of workers are in that mostly labor industries,
Speaker 1: but trugging is pretty big for Central States, and most
Speaker 1: of these employees are in the Midwest. Some of the
Speaker 1: biggest numbers are Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, which also happened
Speaker 1: to be battleground states for Biden as well. I thought
Speaker 1: it was also interesting when President Biden announced this, he
Speaker 1: said that the financial problems Central States pension was having
Speaker 1: were due to changes in the economy and attacks on unions. Uh,
Speaker 1: he didn't say anything about how well or poorly they
Speaker 1: may have been managed, and I think he doesn't want
Speaker 1: to upset them, right, He wouldn't say that specifically, but
Speaker 1: I do think, you know, White House officials are also
Speaker 1: saying some of these multi employer pension funds they've lost
Speaker 1: employers and worker so there's less people, actual individuals who
Speaker 1: are putting money intowards these programs. And there's also been,
Speaker 1: you know, a loss of some of these industries, like
Speaker 1: like trucking, like even the auto industry. So some of
Speaker 1: these plans used to have maybe twenty companies twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: and now that's sort of dwindled down to maybe ten
Speaker 1: or twelve. We'll be right back Neil in you're reporting,
Speaker 1: you show the shortcomings of the way public pensions are run.
Speaker 1: But everybody was taking a hit on their investments last year.
Speaker 1: How much can you really lay at their feet versus
Speaker 1: it just been a really bad year for investing. Well,
Speaker 1: I certainly wouldn't blame pension funds because we all had
Speaker 1: a bad year in the markets. But I would say
Speaker 1: that it's certainly an open question whether it's you're going
Speaker 1: to maximize your returns by having people who don't know
Speaker 1: much about investing at the very top of the pyramid
Speaker 1: at these public pension funds. I looked at Canada they
Speaker 1: have largely replaced these novices with financial experts at their
Speaker 1: large plans. And I also looked at the Netherlands, where
Speaker 1: interestingly they started a system after the Great Financial Crisis
Speaker 1: where the directors of public pension funds have to be
Speaker 1: accredited by their central bank. Taylor, Are there any plans
Speaker 1: in the US by the Bidy administration all to take
Speaker 1: a hard look at the way pensions are being run
Speaker 1: to prevent things like what happened with the Central States
Speaker 1: pension fund. Well, I think it's it's important to say
Speaker 1: that the bailout that the Central States spended pitted from
Speaker 1: is available to other multi employer pension plans as well,
Speaker 1: so they are able to actually apply for this through
Speaker 1: the American Rescue Plan to sort of shore up their
Speaker 1: own pension plans. So that's definitely available still for them.
Speaker 1: But the Biden administration says that they believe that there
Speaker 1: was over two hundred multi employer plans that they thought
Speaker 1: were going to be insolvent by at least six and
Speaker 1: they said that this program would ensure that at least
Speaker 1: through one that these plans should be well to stay
Speaker 1: in place with that assistance. So, you know, there's definitely
Speaker 1: a lot of money. This thirty six billion dollars was
Speaker 1: just for Central States, and so there has to be
Speaker 1: at least a couple more billion dollars for these other plans,
Speaker 1: being that these applications are still open. Neil and Suzanne,
Speaker 1: you talked about how taxpayers are kind of creeping up
Speaker 1: paying the bill for this. As more and more money
Speaker 1: goes toward funding pensions, are we likely to see pensions
Speaker 1: looking to more government money in order to help them out.
Speaker 1: I don't know many people who turned it down if
Speaker 1: it was available. Is that another way that kind of
Speaker 1: all of us are going to wind up footing the
Speaker 1: bill here. I think we already are, and I think
Speaker 1: that is sort of wrapped inside that number that I
Speaker 1: gave you, where the amount of payrolls for public organizations
Speaker 1: that is going to pay pensions rather than salaries has
Speaker 1: gone up fivefold in recent years. So it's sort of
Speaker 1: like we're all getting a thousand cuts, death by a
Speaker 1: thousand cuts, or taxes by a thousand cuts. The public
Speaker 1: burdens certainly is going up. And that's not just for
Speaker 1: people with pensions, but if you have just for one
Speaker 1: k it's affecting you too in that way absolutely. I
Speaker 1: mean your local taxes, your property taxes might go up
Speaker 1: because of that. I talked to somebody who's on the
Speaker 1: board of a public plan in Pennsylvania, a state senator,
Speaker 1: and when she was campaigning, she said that was one
Speaker 1: of the most common complaints she got when she knocked
Speaker 1: on doors was people saying, the pension system is causing
Speaker 1: my taxes to go up. Suzanne, how were it should
Speaker 1: people who have pensions in general b that the money
Speaker 1: is going to be there for them, well, people who
Speaker 1: have private pension plans and plans that are frozen. There is,
Speaker 1: of course, the federal agency, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corps,
Speaker 1: who is sort of a backstop if a company goes
Speaker 1: bankrupt and can no longer pay its pension obligations, and
Speaker 1: so there is that they often don't pay the full amount, right,
Speaker 1: they'll get some some percentage, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: will have wound up on a very short end of
Speaker 1: the stick in the last couple of decades, especially high
Speaker 1: income people, because there's a cap on how much they'll pay.
Speaker 1: So if you are getting a very modest pension, you'll
Speaker 1: probably get all or most of your pension. If you
Speaker 1: were to coin a common example, an airline pilot with
Speaker 1: a lot of years of experience, you're gonna get a
Speaker 1: big haircut. Yes, it's definitely not a replacement, and it's
Speaker 1: incredibly hurtful for people who have planned their entire retirement
Speaker 1: out very judiciously, but all of a sudden, through no
Speaker 1: faults of their own, see one huge part of their
Speaker 1: planning just completely evaporate. Yeah. I just wanted to jump
Speaker 1: in here too and say that this is also like
Speaker 1: a part of the Biden brand, Like he calls himself
Speaker 1: regularly the most pro labor, the most pro union president
Speaker 1: in history. So it's definitely a part of a wider
Speaker 1: strategy in his administration, sort of almost co opting Trump's
Speaker 1: a America First, his America First initiatives. And so we
Speaker 1: had this Big Chips Bill, which is basically an allocation
Speaker 1: from Congress of about fifty billion dollars to sort of
Speaker 1: encourage foreign countries to invest in America, to create these semiconductors,
Speaker 1: you know, these little chips that are in cell phones
Speaker 1: and washing machines, and sort of bring more investment back
Speaker 1: to America that has been lost to places like China.
Speaker 1: And so he's definitely sort of using this message that
Speaker 1: was specifically Trump branded in places like Ohio and Michigan,
Speaker 1: where Trump, you know, once did really well, and he's
Speaker 1: sort of trying to kind of re appealed to those
Speaker 1: to those voters, many people that have felt disenfranchised by
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party. And we've seen him just continuously go
Speaker 1: on trips to places like Pennsylvania. He's always talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, where he grew up in Scranted in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, he's just trying to relate with these communities.
Speaker 1: He talks about how his grandfather worked in the coal
Speaker 1: industry and so it's definitely a part of the Biden
Speaker 1: persona protecting the incomes of Americans. Of course, it has
Speaker 1: to be noted that Biden has some work to do
Speaker 1: shoring up his support among unions after the big railroad strike,
Speaker 1: where a lot of rower workers felt like they were
Speaker 1: not done right by the deal that they eventually had
Speaker 1: to take. I think if you look at the politics
Speaker 1: of this, you can also draw an analogy with the
Speaker 1: bailout or the reduction that people got for their student loans,
Speaker 1: where basically we had a system in place and it
Speaker 1: was supposed to work in some way, and the Biden
Speaker 1: administration decided, presumably in part due to political calculations, that
Speaker 1: it was a good idea to offer people a bail
Speaker 1: out beyond what was written on paper. And the interesting
Speaker 1: thing that you you bring up about this to and
Speaker 1: load of forgiveness is the same sort of criticism that
Speaker 1: Republicans had for the bailout is the same ones that
Speaker 1: they said for the student will forgiveness plan, which is basically,
Speaker 1: this is no longer about the pandemic. You're using the
Speaker 1: pandemic as an excuse to sort of push these big
Speaker 1: social spending bills and to sort of benefit your constituents.
Speaker 1: With the student loans program, it's it's young people, um.
Speaker 1: With the spailout, it's union workers and labor leaders, and
Speaker 1: so it's just it's definitely a continuous criticism that the
Speaker 1: Republicans have had, and it's certainly a question of whether
Speaker 1: or how long can bin and say programs are because
Speaker 1: of the economic situation of the pandemic Neil, given the
Speaker 1: rough time that some of these pensions have been through,
Speaker 1: do you expect there to be changes in the way
Speaker 1: they're run to prevent these kinds of shortfalls in the future.
Speaker 1: Is this just the way it's going to be? I
Speaker 1: think they're kind of ongoing in part, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: the new employees, new teachers and firemen and police are
Speaker 1: not getting nearly as generous pension benefits as their predecessors did.
Speaker 1: In some cases, you're seeing lots of tinkering around the
Speaker 1: edges to make this system less costly, because in most states,
Speaker 1: in most cities, it's virtually impossible to take back promises
Speaker 1: once you've made them. Oh Weinberg, Suzanne Wally, Kayla Gardner,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for talking with me today. Thank you,
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