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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.