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90–233 PDF 2004

S. Hrg. 108–285

SAFEGUARDING AMERICA’S RETIREMENT SECURITY: AN EXAMINATION OF DEFINED BENEFIT

PENSION PLANS AND THE PENSION BENEFIT

GUARANTY CORPORATION

HEARING

BEFORE THE

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, THE BUDGET, AND 

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON 

GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

SEPTEMBER 15, 2003

Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS 

SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama 

JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota 

FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

MARK PRYOR, Arkansas

MICHAEL D. BOPP, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

JOYCE A. RECHTSCHAFFEN, Minority Staff Director and Counsel 

AMY B. NEWHOUSE, Chief Clerk

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, THE BUDGET, AND INTERNATIONAL 

SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE 

PETER G. FITZGERALD, Illinois, Chairman 

TED STEVENS, Alaska 

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio 

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania 

ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah 

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire 

RICHARD C. SHELBY, Alabama 

DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii 

CARL LEVIN, Michigan 

THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware 

MARK DAYTON, Minnesota 

FRANK LAUTENBERG, New Jersey 

MARK PRYOR, Arkansas

MICHAEL J. RUSSELL, Staff Director 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Minority Staff Director 

TARA E. BAIRD, Chief Clerk 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Opening statements: Page 

Senator Fitzgerald ............................................................................................ 1

Senator Akaka .................................................................................................. 4

WITNESSES 

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2003

Malcolm Wicks, Minister for Pensions, British Government ............................... 6

Peter R. Fisher, Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, U.S. Department 

of the Treasury ..................................................................................................... 8

Steven A. Kandarian, Executive Director, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation ........................................................................................................................ 9

Christopher W. O’Flinn, Vice President, Corporate Human Resources, AT&T, 

on behalf of the ERISA Industry Committee ..................................................... 23

Kathy Anne Cissna, Director of Retirement Plans, R.J. Reynolds, on behalf 

of the American Benefits Council ....................................................................... 24

Norman P. Stein, Law Professor, University of Alabama, on behalf of the 

Pension Rights Center ......................................................................................... 26

JoOhn P. Parks, Vice President, Pension Practice Council, American Academy 

of Actuaries ........................................................................................................... 28

J. Mark Iwry, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution ..................................... 30

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF WITNESSES

Cissna, Kathy Anne: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 24

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 98

Fisher, Peter R.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 8

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 43

Iwry, J. Mark: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 30

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 142

Kandarian, Steven A.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 9

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 54

O’Flinn, Christopher W.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 23

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 72

Parks, John P.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 28

Prepared statement with attachments ........................................................... 125

Stein, Norman P.: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 26

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 116

Wicks, Malcolm: 

Testimony .......................................................................................................... 6

APPENDIX

Charts submitted for the Record by Senator Fitzgerald 

Total Underfunding, Insured Single-Employer Plans ................................... 157

PBGC Net Position, Single-Employer Program, FY 1980–FY 2002 ............. 158

Uncertain Futures ............................................................................................ 159

Single-Employer Premium Income, FY 1992–FY 2002 ................................. 160

(1)

SAFEGUARDING AMERICA’S RETIREMENT SECURITY: AN EXAMINATION OF DEFINED 

BENEFIT PENSION PLANS AND THE PENSION BENEFIT GUARANTY CORPORATION 

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2003

U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, THE BUDGET, AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY, OF THE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:31 p.m., in room 

SD–342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Peter G. Fitzgerald, 

Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding. 

Present: Senators Fitzgerald and Akaka. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR FITZGERALD 

Senator FITZGERALD. Good afternoon. The Subcommittee will 

come to order. 

Today, we are conducting an oversight hearing on the challenges 

facing the Nation’s defined benefit pension plans. Broadly speaking, we will examine, one, the financial condition of the Pension 

Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the PBGC, the government-sponsored corporation which insures defined benefit pension plans; two, 

how Congress can help shore up the PBGC; and three, how Congress and the administration can help improve the accuracy of the 

actuarial and funding practices of company-sponsored plans and 

thereby help bolster the retirement security of millions of American 

workers. 

The Nation’s private sector defined benefit pension system is 

breaking down and needs to be fixed. Financially weak companies 

have for years made pension promises that they could not deliver 

and then simply dumped their unfunded pension promises off onto 

the PBGC. The PBGC is now being crushed by the weight of those 

claims. 

Financially strong companies with responsibly managed defined 

benefit pension plans should be concerned because they may be unfairly forced to pay for the irresponsible promises of the financially 

weak and irresponsible companies. And taxpayers should be concerned, as well. If current trends continue, the taxpayers themselves may someday be called upon to pay for the pension promises 

of the irresponsible and financially weak companies that dump 

their pension plans on the PBGC. 

2

1 Chart entitled ‘‘Total Underfunding, Insured Single-Employer Plans’’ appears in the Appendix on page 157. 2 Chart entitled ‘‘PBGC Net Position, Single-Employer Program, FY 1980–FY 2002’’ appears 

in the Appendix on page 158. 

If the current situation seems reminiscent of the savings and 

loan crisis of the late 1980’s, that is because it is. And just as weak 

S&Ls then sent hoards of lobbyists to Washington asking Congress 

to prevent a day of reckoning, so, too, we now have companies with 

weak and underfunded pension plans flooding Congress with pleas 

for further indulgences. Let us hope that this time around, Congress doesn’t succumb to the siren song of those who would urge 

us to roll the problem over into future years. 

The reason we are here now is because the problem has been 

rolled over repeatedly in the past on the promise that things will 

get better tomorrow. Well, in my judgment, tomorrow is here, and 

we ought to act before it is too late. Although pension fund assets totaled $1.6 trillion at the end of 

2002, estimates indicate that private sector defined benefit pension 

plans are now collectively underfunded by nearly $400 billion. As 

illustrated in our first chart at the end of the dais, the level of 

underfunding has increased sharply in the last 2 years.1

The steel industry has already staked its claim against the 

PBGC, taking the top three spots for the largest claims submitted 

to the pension insurer in the last 2 years. Bethlehem Steel, whose 

pension plan terminated in 2003, had $3.9 billion in claims. LTV’s 

pension plan terminated in 2002, with $1.9 billion in claims. And 

National Steel filed claims of $1.3 billion in 2003. 

In its last filing prior to termination, Bethlehem Steel reported 

that its pension plan was 84 percent funded on a so-called current 

liability basis. The trouble is, if a plan terminates, the legislative 

definition of current liability is typically a figure that is far less 

than the actual amount of money that is needed to pay the benefits 

that are owed. Thus, it turns out that Bethlehem Steel’s pension 

plan, which was 84 percent funded on a so-called current liability 

basis, was actually only 45 percent funded on a termination basis. 

As a result, the other companies that remain in the PBGC insurance program, or perhaps even someday the taxpayers themselves, 

will have to pay over 50 percent of the benefits which Bethlehem 

Steel promised its workers but apparently never funded. 

It is here worth noting that despite its remarkably low level of 

funding, the laws currently on the books allowed Bethlehem Steel 

to make no cash contributions whatever in the 3 years prior to its 

plan’s termination. 

The PBGC’s financial health has deteriorated dramatically in recent months, and I would like to refer you to the second chart.2 The 

PBGC has experienced a swing from a $7.7 billion accumulated 

surplus at the end of fiscal year 2001 to a $5.7 billion deficit as of 

July 31, 2003. This swing amounts to a $13.4 billion swing within 

22 months. The PBGC now faces its largest deficit ever, with the 

likelihood of additional severe losses in the immediate and intermediate future. 

PBGC’s record losses are primarily attributable to the recent termination of several severely underfunded pension plans sponsored 

by financially troubled and bankrupt companies. The combination 

3

1 Chart entitled ‘‘Uncertain Futures’’ appears in the Appendix on page 159. 

2 Chart entitled ‘‘Single-Employer Premium Income, FY 1992–FY 2002’’ appears in the Appendix on page 160. 

of a decline in equity valuations and near record low interest rates 

has resulted in a double whammy for defined benefit pension plans. 

Now, I would like to refer you to the third chart.1 This is a chart 

that was copied with permission from the Wall Street Journal. As 

it illustrates, the unfunded pension liabilities of financially weak 

companies have soared in recent years. The PBGC currently estimates that when it closes out its fiscal year for 2003, the financially weak companies will have underfunded their liabilities by 

$80 billion. This figure is up $45 billion from last year’s estimate. 

Further complicating the financial stability of the PBGC is a 

steady decline of premium income. And for this, you can refer to 

the fourth chart.2 It shows premium income declining from $1.1 bil- lion in 1996 to just $787 million in 2002. This leveling off in 2002 

results from more underfunded plans qualifying for exemption from 

paying the variable rate premium and an increasing number of 

plans being terminated. Premium income in 2002 at $787 million 

was substantially less than it was 10 years ago, in 1993, when it 

was $890 million. With a shift to more defined contribution plans, 

such as 401(k)s, it is unlikely that premiums will increase significantly in the foreseeable future. 

At the same time that the PBGC’s premium income has been 

falling, the benefits that the PBGC has become obligated to pay 

have been skyrocketing. Benefits paid in 1993 were $720 million. 

Last year, they were $1.5 billion, and this year, the benefits paid 

are likely to reach $2.5 billion, over three times the benefits paid 

in 1993 and many times the amount that the PBGC is taking in 

in premium income. 

Obviously and quite simply, the long-term survival and success 

of the PBGC will be in jeopardy if the PBGC’s premium income 

continues to decline and its benefit payments continue to rise at 

such a rapid rate. In my judgment, Congress must act quickly to 

force companies which sponsor defined benefit pension plans to do 

a better job of funding them, to stem the tide of terminations by 

financially weak companies, and to figure out a way to increase the 

PBGC’s premium income, probably by converting to a more sufficiently risk-based system. 

The plight of the PBGC is of great consequence to our Nation. 

The PBGC’s two insurance programs, the single-employer insurance program and the multi-employer program, insure the pension 

benefits of over 44 million participants in more than 32,000 private 

defined benefit pension plans. As many as 1.8 million of those participants are in my home State of Illinois. 

In July of this year, the U.S. General Accounting Office designated the PBGC single-employer pension insurance program as 

‘‘high risk.’’ This action is of particular significance because it 

marks only the third time in the history of the GAO’s high-risk list 

that an agency or program has been added independently of the 

GAO’s biennial report. 

We cannot lose track among the acronyms and dollar figures of 

the toll this issue might have on working people across America. 

It is cruel and unacceptable to pull the rug from under hard-workVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:42 Feb 06, 2004 Jkt 090233 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\90233.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
4

ing Americans by telling them some of their deserved and promised 

pension benefits no longer exist. It is also unacceptable to force the 

taxpayers to bail out the PBGC. 

These principles should be our ground zero commitment to American workers, that government has an obligation to make companies live up to the promises they make to their workers and that 

it has an obligation to protect taxpayers from picking up the tab 

of a failed system. 

United Airlines, headquartered in my State, which on a termi- nation basis has underfunded its pension plan by some $7.5 billion, 

has recently been pushing for legislation that would allow it to receive a 5-year moratorium on deficit reduction contributions and 

then have 20 years thereafter to amortize the additional unfunded 

liability accruing during that time. The big risk, of course, is that 

United’s pension plan would become even more unfunded and 

would eventually be terminated. The PBGC would then be stuck 

with hefty liabilities, United workers would lose benefits, and other 

companies would be forced to pay for one industry’s unfunded 

promises. 

Special interest legislation such as that proposed by United is exactly the sort which, in my judgment, will make the problem worse. 

As one of our distinguished witnesses said earlier this year, when 

you are in the hole, the first rule is to stop digging. I plan to do 

what I can to make sure that Washington does no more digging. 

Clearly, changes are needed in the defined benefit pension system. In July, the administration proposed changes to improve the 

accuracy and transparency of pension information. The administration proposal focuses on three key areas: Improving the accuracy 

of plan sponsors’ liability calculations, increasing the transparency 

of pension plan information, and strengthening pension funding to 

protect workers and retirees. We look forward to hearing more 

about this proposal from our witnesses. 

In addition, this hearing will explore a number of issues and 

challenges facing the Nation’s pension system and the PBGC. 

These include replacement of the 30-year Treasury bond rate; 

strengthening of funding rules; accurate measurement of assets 

and liabilities; current liability versus termination liability, the definition of those terms; declining PBGC premium revenue; increasing the extent to which pension contributions are tax deductible—

they are only deductible now, as I understand it, up to the amount 

of your required contributions and it is difficult to make excess contributions in years that the company is doing well; the allowance 

of so-called alternative investments that some companies have been 

allowed to make; and another hot topic, the effect of cash balance 

plans. 

We look forward to hearing the views of our witnesses on these 

and other issues affecting the Nation’s pension system as well as 

their recommendations on ways to ensure the financial stability of 

the PBGC and the pension plans of companies the PBGC insures. 

At stake is nothing less than the financial security of millions of 

Americans who rely or are planning to rely on their company funded pension plans in their retirement years. 

Now, before turning to our witnesses for testimony, I want to introduce the Ranking Democrat. Senator Akaka has arrived, and I 

5

thank Senator Akaka for being here. Would you like to make an 

opening statement. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA 

Senator AKAKA. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I want to say good afternoon 

to you and our panelists. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for 

holding this hearing today and, again, thank our witnesses for 

sharing their insights with us this afternoon. 

Although more employers offer defined contribution plans such 

as a 401(k) plan than defined benefit plans, we must ensure that 

the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is able to protect the retirement security of the estimated 34 million hard-working Americans participating in single-employer defined benefit pension plans. 

I am concerned that the PBGC lacks sufficient reserves to carry out 

its statutory responsibility of providing workers with protection 

when their former employers are no longer able to support their retirement benefits. 

Comptroller General David Walker recently testified before the 

House Committee on Education and the Workforce about the risks 

that PBGC is and will be facing. He noted that in fiscal year 2002, 

PBGC’s termination of defined benefit plans offered by Anchor 

Glass, Bethlehem Steel, and Polaroid accounted for a $4.2 billion 

loss to PBGC. While these plans represent the largest losses to 

PBGC in their respective industries, they are just three examples. 

In its latest review, GAO found that many of the single employer 

defined benefit plans are severely underfunded, which led Congress’ non-partisan auditor to place the PBGC on its high-risk list 

in July. 

The PBGC has faced deficit situations before. The agency was on 

the high-risk list in 1990, due to weak funding rules and ran deficits during the mid-1980’s and early 1990’s. Congress enacted legislation to strengthen minimum funding standards and to enhance 

rules on variable rate premiums paid by defined benefit pension 

plans. 

Although the PBGC has faced problems before, to which Congress responded, it is critical that we act once again to ensure that 

PBGC is self-supporting. Most PBGC revenue comes from premiums set by Congress and paid by the private sector employers 

that sponsor defined benefit plans. Other sources of income are assets from terminated plans taken over by the PBGC, investment 

income, and recoveries collected from companies when they end underfunded pension plans. 

To shore up the financial foundations of PBGC, there must be 

greater transparency of plan information so that workers understand the stability of their plans and the contributions that are 

made by their employers. Employees should know if the company 

for which they work will be unable to pay employee pensions. 

There are those who believe we should adopt limited, short-term 

changes to pension funding rules and just wait out the current economic conditions that pose risks to the PBGC. Others recommend 

measures to address loopholes in funding rules. The administration 

has proposed changing the rate at which an employee’s contribution is calculated over the long term. It is crucial that we work together to secure the retirement security of American workers. 

6

I look forward to discussing what can be done to guarantee that 

companies honor their pension commitments, and when these 

promises cannot be met, what must be done to make sure that the 

PBGC is sufficiently funded to carry out its statutory mission as 

insurer of the private defined benefit pension plans. 

We look forward to the hearing and the testimony, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for holding this hearing. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Thank you, Senator Akaka. 

I am pleased to tell you that we have a special guest here from 

the Nation of Great Britain, our great friend and ally, Malcolm 

Wicks, who is the Pension Minister in British Prime Minister Tony 

Blair’s cabinet. Mr. Wicks was appointed in 2001 as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Work at the Department for 

Work and Pensions. Mr. Wicks has had a distinguished career of 

service to the British Government, also having served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Lifelong Learning at the 

Department for Education and Employment, and as Chairman of 

the Education Select Committee, and as a Member of Parliament. 

Mr. Wicks, we are delighted to have you here. I understand that 

you are working on some new legislation in Great Britain and I 

would like to give you the opportunity to address the panel for as 

long as you would like to go on. Thank you very much for being 

here. 

TESTIMONY OF MALCOLM WICKS, MINISTER FOR PENSIONS, 

BRITISH GOVERNMENT 

Mr. WICKS. Mr. Chairman, may I first of all thank you, and indeed Senator Akaka, for this opportunity to say a few words. I 

promise to detain the Subcommittee only a few minutes, because 

knowing the Subcommittee system in my own country, you have 

important work to do and important witnesses. But I thank you for 

your kindness and courtesy in giving me this opportunity, which as 

both a Parliamentarian myself and as a Minister, I genuinely regard as a very great privilege. 

May I say that the close relationship between Great Britain and 

the United States extends to social policy, and I think we are increasingly learning a great deal from one another. We are here on 

a relatively short visit to Washington, essentially to listen and 

learn. 

The United Kingdom, like your country, finds itself in a situation 

where pensions as increasingly rising up the agendas that count, 

particularly the agenda of public opinion. Our demographics are 

not dissimilar. I am struck by the fact that whereas 100 or so years 

ago, many working Americans, and certainly many working Britains, never outlived their working life. Today, there is the concept 

of retirement and, indeed, in the 21st Century in the United States 

and Great Britain, many of our citizens may have retirements lasting 20, or indeed, increasingly 30 or more years. So this couldn’t 

be more important as an issue. 

I do not believe that we face crisis. I think we overuse the term 

‘‘crisis.’’ We should use it properly and in context. But we all face 

in our democracies very formidable challenges. 

Like in the United States, in the United Kingdom, there is concern about occupational pensions, defined benefit or final salary 

7

schemes, and we plan to legislate in our coming session in the 

House of Commons to introduce what we will call pension protection funds, drawing very much on the experience of the Pension 

Benefit Guaranty Corporation. And may I say that we have had 

useful meetings in Washington over the last few days, not the least 

with Steven Kandarian and his colleagues this morning. I am 

grateful to him and, indeed, the cooperation they are giving to our 

officials who are asking some very detailed and searching questions 

about the Corporation’s operation. 

Senators I am very grateful for this opportunity and thank you 

very much. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Minister, thank you very much for being 

here. We thank you for joining us today, and good luck on setting 

up your form of the PBGC. Thank you very much. 

At this time, I would like to welcome our first panel with two distinguished witnesses. Our first witness is the Hon. Peter R. Fisher, 

the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance of the U.S. Department 

of the Treasury. Secretary Fisher was sworn in on August 9, 2001. 

His experience and understanding of the financial markets proved 

invaluable as our Nation and our financial system responded to the 

terrorist attacks of September 11. 

Secretary Fisher’s accomplishments include his leadership in 

helping to improve and streamline our government’s fiscal practices 

and policies, enacting terrorism risk insurance, promoting job creation and investment, developing policies on deposit insurance reform, advocating for enhanced disclosure by government-sponsored 

enterprises, working to prevent identity theft, and improving Federal debt management practices. 

Under Secretary Fisher will be departing the Department of 

Treasury in the next month. In my judgment, his departure will be 

a great loss for the entire Federal Government. 

I would also like to welcome Steven A. Kandarian, who is the Executive Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. 

Prior to joining the PBGC, Mr. Kandarian was managing director 

and founder of Orion Partners, L.L.C., in Boston, Massachusetts, 

where he managed a private equity fund specializing in venture 

capital and corporate acquisitions. He also was managing director 

of Lee Capital Holdings, a private equity firm also based in Boston, 

and was an investment banker in Houston, where he specialized in 

mergers and acquisitions and initial public offerings. 

The government is especially grateful to have an individual with 

such extensive private sector financial experience at the helm of 

the PBGC during this difficult time. His grasp of the issues surrounding the pension system and the PBGC, as well as his innovative ideas, are a significant and timely addition to the public policy 

debate underway. 

Again, I want to thank you both for being here and I would tell 

Minister Wicks, it won’t be rude if you get up. You don’t have to 

wait through the whole hearing, and you can stay as long as you 

like, but we will not feel hurt if you have other commitments, so 

thank you. 

Under Secretary Fisher. 

8

1The prepared statement of Mr. Fisher appears in the Appendix on page 43. 

TESTIMONY OF PETER R. FISHER,1 UNDER SECRETARY FOR 

DOMESTIC FINANCE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY 

Mr. FISHER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for those 

generous and kind introductory remarks. Mr. Chairman, Ranking 

Member Akaka, I am very pleased to be here with Steve Kandarian 

to discuss our defined benefit pension system. Mr. Kandarian will 

discuss the current financial condition of the PBGC and I would 

like to discuss the administration’s proposals for strengthening the 

long-term health of our defined benefit pensions. 

Pension plan underfunding and the PBGC’s deficit are symptoms 

of a serious structural problem in the defined benefit pension system. As you noted, Mr. Chairman, the GAO reached the same conclusion in placing the PBGC’s single employer insurance program 

on its list of high-risk government programs. The time to fix the 

system is now, while the problems are still manageable. 

In our view, the best way to protect the PBGC is to be sure that 

pension plans are adequately funded. This is also the best way to 

provide pension security for our Nation’s workers and retirees. 

Pension problems can be placed into two priority categories, comprehensive reform issues that need our prompt attention and more 

narrowly-focused issues that need Congress’ immediate attention. 

Comprehensive reform issues include strengthening pension 

funding rules, reexamining and updating certain key actuarial assumptions, and shoring up the PBGC’s insurance program overall. 

My written testimony, which I ask to be included in the record, 

outlines the full range of issues the Congress and the administration will need to address to achieve comprehensive reform. Let me 

now just summarize the three areas where we have asked Congress 

for immediate action. 

First, accurate measurement of pension liabilities. Fixing the 

pension funding rules won’t help unless we ensure that we are accurately measuring the pension liabilities on which those rules 

rely. Our first step is replacing the 30-year Treasury rate required 

under current law to be used as a discount rate in measuring pension liabilities for minimum funding purposes. 

The administration recommends that pension liabilities ultimately be discounted with rates drawn from a corporate bond yield 

curve that takes into account the term structure of pension plans’ 

liabilities. For the first 2 years, pension liabilities would be discounted using a blend of corporate rates. A phase-in to the appropriate yield curve discount rate would begin in the third year and 

would be fully applicable by the fifth year. Using the yield curve 

is essential to match the timing of future benefit payments with 

the resources necessary to make those payments. Our proposal is 

consistent with well established best practice in financial accounting, can be readily implemented by plan sponsors, and provides a 

transition period for implementation. 

Second, we think we need greater transparency of pension funding. There is no requirement under current law that workers and 

retirees covered by defined benefit pension plans receive regular, 

timely information on their plan’s financial condition. We propose 

to remedy this by requiring that each year, sponsors provide each 

9

1The prepared statement of Mr. Kandarian with attachments appears in the Appendix on 

page 54. 

participant with the value of his or her pension plan’s assets and 

the level of liabilities measured on both a current liability and a 

termination basis. Not only will disclosure of this information be 

valuable for those covered by plans, it will provide a powerful incentive for sponsors to keep their plans well funded. 

Third, containing the risks to the PBGC of underfunded plans. 

Underfunded plans sponsored by financially weak firms which pose 

the greatest risk to the PBGC have few restrictions in expanding 

benefits. The administration proposes to add some protection for 

the PBGC by strengthening the restrictions on those plans in making new promises. 

In summary, Mr. Chairman, we face a real problem today. We 

need to act this year in these three areas that I have identified and 

then we will have provided the basis for which to move on to comprehensive reform. The administration stands ready to work with 

this Subcommittee and the rest of Congress to accomplish these 

goals. Thank you very much. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. 

Mr. Kandarian, you may proceed with your opening statement. 

TESTIMONY OF STEVEN A. KANDARIAN,1 EXECUTIVE 

DIRECTOR, PENSION BENEFIT GUARANTY CORPORATION 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Akaka, thank 

you for holding this hearing on pension funding and the financial 

health of PBGC. 

Defined benefit pension plans continue to be important for the 

retirement security of millions of Americans, but recently, there 

has been a sharp deterioration in plan funding. 

In July, the administration proposed improving the way pension 

liabilities are calculated, increasing the transparency of pension 

funding, and providing new safeguards against underfunding by financially troubled companies. The administration also called for 

funding reforms. 

In addition to urging the Subcommittee to act upon these important measures, my testimony today will focus on PBGC’s financial 

condition, plan underfunding, and some of the challenges facing the 

defined benefit system. 

During fiscal year 2002, PBGC’s single-employer insurance program went from a surplus of $7.7 billion to a deficit of $3.6 billion, 

a loss of $11.3 billion in just 1 year. Based on our latest unaudited 

financial report, the deficit has grown to $5.7 billion as of July 31, 

2003. 

As you just mentioned, GAO recently placed PBGC’s single-employer insurance program on its high-risk list. My hope is that 

GAO’s high-risk designation will spur reforms to better protect the 

retirement security of American workers. 

As of December 31, 2000, total underfunding in the single-employer plans was less than $50 billion. Because of declining interest 

rates and equity values, as of December 31, 2002, 2 years later, 

underfunding exceeded $400 billion, the largest number ever recorded. Even with the recent rises in the stock market and interest 

10

rates, PBGC projects that underfunding still exceeds $350 billion 

today. 

Because large plans typically invest more than 60 percent of 

their assets in equities, there is a mismatch between pension assets and pension liabilities, which tend to be bond-like in nature. 

With the market conditions of the last 3 years, this asset-liability 

mismatch caused many plans to become significantly underfunded. 

In addition to massive underfunding and vulnerability to equity 

market volatility, the defined benefit system faces other serious 

challenges, including adverse demographic trends and weaknesses 

in the pension funding rules. While each of these challenges is discussed in my written testimony, given time constraints, I will focus 

on four key weaknesses in the funding rules. 

First, the funding targets are set too low. Employers can stop 

making contributions when the plan is funded at 90 percent of current liability, a measure that reflects past legislative compromises, 

not the amount of money needed to pay all benefits if a plan terminates. As a result, employers can stop making contributions before 

a plan is sufficiently funded to protect participants. 

Second, the funding rules often allow contribution holidays. Even 

seriously underfunded plans may not be required to make annual 

contributions. Bethlehem Steel, for example, made no cash contributions to its plan for 3 years prior to plan termination, and the 

U.S. Airway pilots’ plan had no cash contributions for 4 years before the plan was terminated. 

Third, the funding and premium rules do not reflect the risk of 

loss to participants and premium payers. The same funding and 

premium rules apply regardless of a company’s financial health, 

but PBGC has found that nearly 90 percent of the companies representing large claims against the insurance system have had junk 

bond credit ratings for 10 years prior to termination. 

Fourth, because of the structure of the funding rules, contributions to plans can be extremely volatile. After years with little or 

no required contributions, companies can be faced with sharp 

spikes in funding. Although our complicated funding rules were designed in part to minimize the volatility of contributions, the current rules have failed to achieve this goal. 

Mr. Chairman, we must make fundamental changes to the funding rules that will put underfunded plans on a predictable, steady 

path to better funding. The administration is working on comprehensive reforms that will get pension plans better funded and 

eliminate some of the risk shifting and moral hazard in the current 

system. 

It is our hope that these reforms will put the defined benefit system on a stable footing for the long term. If companies do not fund 

the pension promises they make, someone else will have to pay, either workers in the form of reduced benefits, other companies in 

the form of higher premiums, or taxpayers in the form of a PBGC 

bailout. We should not pass off the cost of today’s problems to future generations. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to testify. I will be 

happy to answer any questions. 

11

Senator FITZGERALD. Thank you both very much. We appreciate 

your being here and appreciate your good insights in your opening 

statements. 

Mr. Kandarian, I would like to begin with you. You focus mainly 

on trying to shore up the funding of the plans themselves. You 

noted that the funding targets are probably too low. I do want to 

address that later on, but at the outset, I want to address the problem with your premium revenue being so low compared to the benefits you are paying out. Obviously, that is not sustainable. 

You are getting less premium revenue now than you were 10 

years ago and claims against you, or benefits that you have to pay 

out, have tripled, roughly, in the last 10 years. If I understand it, 

you are going to pay out about how much this year, $2.5 billion, 

is that correct? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Our current run rate, Mr. Chairman, is $2.5 billion. We anticipate in fiscal 2003 that number going up to perhaps 

$2.9 billion. 

Senator FITZGERALD. In this fiscal year? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Fiscal 2003, beginning October 1. Oh-four, pardon me. 

Senator FITZGERALD. OK. So going up to $2.9 billion next year? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Yes. 

Senator FITZGERALD. And how much in premium income do you 

have? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. We are taking in just under $800 million a year 

in the single-employer program currently. 

Senator FITZGERALD. OK. So you are eating into your trust funds 

to pay these claims on an ongoing basis. Obviously, this isn’t sustainable for the long term, barring some kind of incredible upturn 

perhaps in the equity funds that you hold, but those are only about 

30 percent of your overall trust funds, isn’t that correct? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Yes. Our equity investment allocation is approximately 30 percent today. What would have to happen for us 

to get back in balance would be a dramatic improvement in our equity returns, premium income that would continue at these levels 

or perhaps higher because the variable rate premium may kick in 

a little bit stronger, but we still do not anticipate under the current 

rules that that number would exceed $1 billion. It would be less 

than $1 billion a year. 

Senator FITZGERALD. OK. So the question I have for you is are 

our insurance premiums sufficient? It doesn’t look to me like they 

are anywhere close to being sufficient. 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Well, the administration is looking at all these 

different avenues. We have no specific proposal at this point in 

time on premiums. But, really, the first thing I hope we can do is, 

in addition to studying the correct measure of these liabilities, is 

to get these plans better funded so that when they do come into 

this agency, that instead of coming in 50 percent funded, they come 

in 80 or 90 percent funded if there is a need for PBGC insurance. 

Senator FITZGERALD. So it is more manageable if you have to 

take them over. What about funds that are leaving the PBGC? 

There is an increasing number of pension plans that are just leaving the fund. They are switching their workers over to defined conVerDate 0ct 09 2002 09:42 Feb 06, 2004 Jkt 090233 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\90233.TXT SAFFAIRS PsN: PHOGAN
12

tribution plans. That is also having a negative effect on your premium income, correct? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Well, the premiums are determined based upon 

numbers of plan participants. That number has pretty well leveled 

off. So it is driven by that number as well as the variable rate premium amount. 

So what really happened in the last few years was the variable 

rate premium was coming down, largely because of the way it is 

measured and because plans did get well funded in the late 1990’s 

with the stock market boom. But those rules have a lag effect to 

them. The variable rate premium will start to increase, but again, 

we don’t anticipate it going up above $1 billion, which at one point 

we did have in premiums. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Now, I was struck by the figures that Bethlehem Steel, prior to its termination, claimed to be 84 percent funding in its last filing prior to termination——

Mr. KANDARIAN. Right. 

Senator FITZGERALD [continuing]. On a so-called current liability 

basis, and current liability, it is a very complicated definition. I 

tried to unscramble it yesterday. I had several staff members working on it and we found why there is a whole industry of ERISA 

lawyers out there and why they are highly compensated. It is very 

convoluted. It is not a simple definition. I gather there are all sorts 

of different ways of calculating it. 

But the bottom line is, whatever current liability is in ERISA, it 

seems to be something less than the actual amount of money you 

have to put in to pay off the claims. You found that Bethlehem 

Steel was 84 percent funded on a current liability basis, but on a 

termination basis, only 54 percent funded. 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Yes, Senator. What occurred there was, as you 

mentioned, the definition of current liability is dramatically different, especially in the case as we had here recently with declining 

asset values and declining interest rates, which drove up stated liabilities. So the definition of current liability results in these much 

higher stated amounts of funding, and, in fact, for the 5 years before Bethlehem Steel came into our agency on a terminated basis, 

the company made no variable rate premium payments to us. 

The variable rate premium is supposed to reflect these underfunded plans, and here was the largest underfunding the agency 

ever had taken on in its history by a factor of two and there was 

no variable rate premium paid to the agency for 5 years. In addition, over the last 5 years, only about $40 million of cash contributions went into this pension plan that was $4.3 billion underfunded 

when it finally came in. So the current liability measure can really 

be misleading when a company is in a death spiral and terminates 

its pension plan. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Now, some of the later witnesses are going 

to criticize you for focusing on termination liability because they 

say that that is a number taken by calculating the cost of buying 

annuities from insurance companies when terminating a plan and 

that, in fact, you don’t buy annuities. So why do you think termination liability is an important number? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Well, when a company terminates its pension 

plan, even if the company doesn’t go out of business, they can do 

13

what is called a standard termination simply to exit the system 

and start using some other vehicle, perhaps 401(k)s. They go to insurance market and they price out these liabilities in the marketplace and they basically defease these liabilities with insurance 

companies, and the question becomes, even for a company that is 

going out of business, if they had enough money in the pension 

plans, and occasionally one of several pension plans may have 

enough money in it to buy a standard termination annuity in the 

group annuity market, those obligations, those liabilities won’t 

come to the agency under law. They will go right to the insurance 

market. 

So it is really an apples-to-apples basis of what did these liabilities cost in the private marketplace, and for the government to 

say, we are going to price these liabilities higher or lower, I think 

would be wrong. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Senator Akaka, you may have questions 

you want to ask at this point, and then I will ask some questions 

of Secretary Fisher. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I do have 

some questions. 

If I may digress for just a moment, I would like to thank Mr. 

Fisher for bringing the challenges of the Postal Service to the attention of the administration. As the former Chairman of the Committee’s Postal Subcommittee, I appreciate your interest and efforts 

in this area. 

I also want to add my welcome to Minister Wicks for being here 

with us today. 

Now, let me turn to the issue at hand—the need to protect workers’ pensions insured by the PBGC. As the testimony of our panelists will show, there are diverse views and little consensus on how 

the complex issues of pension funding should be approached. I am 

concerned that the administration proposal could unfairly impact 

unionized workers. 

The Department of Labor estimates that 69 percent of unionized 

workers have pension plans as compared to 14 percent of nonunion workers. The U.S. manufacturing industry is more likely to 

employ a unionized workforce because manufacturing jobs are more 

likely to be unionized and are more likely to offer pensions. 

Mr. Fisher, do you believe that the administration’s proposal 

would affect union employees’ pension plans? 

Mr. FISHER. Senator, first, let me be very clear. We certainly 

hope that it will affect their pension plans by getting them better 

funding. 

The connection, as I see it, is that there are in heavy manufacturing a tradition of higher rates of unionization and of older 

workforces at this point, and we have already at this hearing discussed some of the problems in the steel industry. If we don’t get 

to accurate measurement of pension liabilities, those very workers 

are the ones who will be most greatly at risk to have underfunded 

pension plans. 

So we think it is of paramount importance to make sure that 

their retirement security is as protected as we can make it to get 

to accurate measure of liability and that motivated the administration’s proposals we made in July. 

14

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Mr. Fisher. 

Mr. Kandarian, in your testimony, you mentioned that PBGC is 

responsible for paying current and future benefits to 783,000 people in over 3,000 terminated defined benefit plans. Furthermore, 

PBGC operates from premiums that it receives from program participants, and your testimony states that PBGC receives no Federal 

tax dollars. 

My question to you today is, what incentives could keep employers’ well-funded pensions with PBGC? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. What incentives could keep companies in the defined benefit system? I think probably the best incentive is to get 

this system on a stable footing, and there are a number of ways 

to do that. 

First, as Secretary Fisher has mentioned, having accurate measure of liabilities is very important. Disclosure is very important, 

and if I may digress to the question you asked Mr. Fisher a moment ago, it is important for union members to know the status of 

their pension plans. Are they well funded? Are they underfunded? 

If all they hear are these current liability-type numbers that the 

Chairman mentioned, they may be misled into thinking that if a 

company is in trouble financially, that their plan is well funded 

and they won’t lose any benefits, when, in fact, their plan may be 

highly underfunded if the plan terminates. Our disclosure proposals would enable workers to learn what the real numbers are. 

It would enable unions, in particular, to put pressure on companies 

potentially to make sure these plans are properly funded. 

So I think the proposals the administration has talked about 

would be very beneficial to the system and many of the workers 

that you are referring to and you are concerned about. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Kandarian, I have another question. Since 

PBGC does not receive any taxpayer dollars and is not backed by 

the Federal Government, how does the PBGC invest the premiums 

that it receives from employers and does this strategy need to be 

changed to address the additional benefit payments as a result of 

the recent terminations of large underfunded plans? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. The narrow answer to your question is the premium dollars are all invested in U.S. Treasury securities, long-duration U.S. Treasury securities. Those are very safe, of course. 

They aren’t necessarily the highest returning securities. 

The broader question, I think, would be where are the other dollars we have invested, and those are from the trust funds, the plan 

assets that come in to us from a terminated pension plan, and 

those dollars since 1994 have been invested largely in the U.S. 

stock market. The PBGC Board is now considering current investment policies and we anticipate soon that there will be some feedback for the agency as to whether to retain the existing direction 

or to modify that direction in any way. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. I have further questions. 

Senator FITZGERALD. OK. Thank you. 

Mr. Fisher, I want to give you an opportunity to describe the administration’s proposal for having a yield curve that would be used 

in making the calculations regarding a plan’s liabilities. Historically, we have used a 30-year Treasury rate, and since you had a 

15

role in phasing out the 30-year Treasury bond, now we are looking 

for a new benchmark and corporate America would like to take advantage of corporate bond yields, but the administration has proposed that we apply a yield curve to more tightly estimate the liabilities a plan faces. Could you explain the administration’s proposal in that regard? 

Mr. FISHER. Certainly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The administration has agreed with a number of members of the pension community that moving to a corporate interest rate more closely tracks 

the quality of the promise. That is, a pension liability is like the 

liability of a company, so like a bond rating that a company issues, 

a pension promise is a promise made by a corporate sponsor. So at 

a conceptual level, we share that it would be appropriate to move 

from the U.S. Treasury yield curve, which reflects the full faith and 

credit of the United States, to a high-grade corporate credit. 

However, in the interests of accuracy, we think that it is very important, indeed, incumbent on us, to reflect the time structure of 

the benefit promises that companies have made. Using a single interest rate really distorts, especially when you use a long-term interest rate, distorts the valuation of a series of promises or liabilities. 

To use a very simple example, if I owe you $100 next year and I also owe you $100 10 years from now, if we use a single 10-year 

rate to value both of those in present value terms, we are going to 

significantly understate the value today of the burden I face in paying you that $100 next year. 

Given the demographics in our country of an aging population, 

particularly in industries with defined benefit plans, we think it is 

especially important to reflect these payments that will be made 

over the coming years in coming to an accurate measure of the pension plan. 

Now, it is really—mechanically, it is a very simple two-step process. Plan actuaries come up with estimates, and this is the difficult 

part, the estimates of how many dollars have to be paid out in each 

year, and they have to do that no matter what interest rate is 

used. Once they come up with those estimates of how many dollars 

are paid in 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 years, they then have to apply an interest rate to discount those to present values. 

Well, at that step in the operation, you can apply the same interest rate to all of the different annual payments and come up with 

what we know will be an inaccurate measure, or you can apply the 

correct interest rate, a 1-year rate for the 1-year flow, a 5-year rate 

for the 5-year flow, and come up with the most accurate measure 

of liabilities that we know of. This is standard practice now in 

banking and in financial markets. We think it is the right way for 

us to measure pension liabilities to be accurate. This may seem 

complicated for the layman, but for those whose job it is to value 

money sums across time, this is really standard industry practice 

today. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Well, the goal here is just to make the judgment of the liabilities more accurate, isn’t that correct? 

Mr. FISHER. Absolutely, Senator. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Why do you think anybody would oppose 

making those judgments more accurate? 

16

Mr. FISHER. Well, an uncle taught me—I had an uncle who was 

a physicist—that habit is the most underestimated variable. And in 

this area of pension accounting, there is a habit of using a single 

interest rate for the last 30 years. It was embedded in statute in 

1987. I think financial market practices have been evolving over 

the last 20 years and now it is time for these statutes to catch up. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Isn’t it true, though, that the Financial Accounting Standards Board is now referencing using different discount rates depending on the maturity of the obligation in the pension——

Mr. FISHER. I know they are in the process of reviewing their 

rules, and just as we have been reviewing the statutory framework, 

they have been reviewing the accounting framework. We all know 

this is the best practice that we need to be evolving toward. 

Senator FITZGERALD. And, in fact, some actuaries presumably do 

this. I believe I read somewhere that there is something in the 

website of an actuarial association that refers to a way of matching 

the maturity of the obligations with the fund’s assets. And so it is 

likely to become an increasing practice and you are just trying to 

make it more accurate. 

Now, I think the critics who are going to testify after you, the 

one criticism that I suspect they will have of this plan, is that the 

market for corporate bonds, especially long-term corporate bonds, 

can be rather thin. So whatever yield curve is out there isn’t all 

that solid. Obviously, we don’t have as deep a corporate bond market as we do have in Treasuries. Do you have a response to that 

criticism? 

And would you only be talking about AAA-rated companies or investment grade rated corporates? Obviously, they would probably 

like the highest discount rate they could get, so maybe they would 

even want the low investment grade corporates to be used as a 

benchmark, but that is not what you have in mind. 

Mr. FISHER. No, Senator. First, let me be clear. If the legislation 

is enacted as the administration has proposed, we would imagine 

an extensive rulemaking process under the Administrative Procedures Act, fully transparent for all interested groups to comment 

and have an opportunity to look at all the details of the index that 

we would create. That is step one that I think is very important. 

As I explained in my written testimony, toward the back of a 

rather extensive testimony, I will concede, we do think that a few 

adjustments will be necessary to deal with the problem that there 

may be spotty liquidity along the yield curve. We would not be adjusting for the level of rates. But we would look to the Treasury 

yield curve for the structure of interest rates, the shape of the yield 

curve, to make some adjustments, as is very common in the creation of fixed-income indices in our financial markets. I want to be 

very clear about that. That is not a—we would look to high-grade 

corporate bond, whether AAA or AA. We are not wedded to that, 

but that is the sort of issue we would like to be fleshing out 

through——

Senator FITZGERALD. Do you have the power to promulgate this 

rule now without Congress’ authorization? You do have a lot of 

power under the current ERISA law, don’t you, to reference——

17

Mr. FISHER. I don’t believe that we would have the authority 

under current law to create a curve and have the curve be used in 

valuing the minimum funding requirements. 

Senator FITZGERALD. OK. You have to have legislative help on 

this and replacing the 30-year Treasury rate. We are now using, 

is it 120 percent of the 30-year Treasury——

Mr. FISHER. Yes, that is——

Senator FITZGERALD [continuing]. Temporarily until December, 

and we have got to have legislation before the end of the year, and, 

in fact, the sooner the better so companies can plan for their liabilities next year. 

Mr. FISHER. Absolutely, Senator. 

Senator FITZGERALD. I have a couple of more questions for Mr. 

Kandarian. Right now, companies file a statement with you that 

shows their termination liability, but that is kept secret and it is 

not open to the public, not to stockholders of the company, and not 

to plan members, is that correct? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Currently, there is a Section 4010 filing that 

companies with more than $50 million in underfunding file with 

us. So a plan has to be, generally speaking, one of the larger plans 

and to be significantly underfunded and they file this form with us 

which we typically receive within 31⁄2 months of the year end. 

Senator FITZGERALD. I am trying to figure out how it came to the 

point that these filings are secret. Wouldn’t it be in the public’s interest, particularly if you are a worker at the company who is a 

participant in the pension plan, to know the termination liability 

of the company? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. I think the way it came about in the last go 

around in the legislation was that companies were reluctant to 

have this information in the marketplace, and they gave reasons 

why, and that was the compromise at that point in time. 

The administration, however, feels that at least some of this data 

should be made public so that shareholders and financial market 

analysts see this information, as well as workers and plan participants. 

Senator FITZGERALD. So in certain cases, this could be bad news 

that is being kept from the public, whether from investors or from 

members of the pension plan. 

Do you have any idea—I believe there were some articles last 

Friday, a Reuter’s one I recall specifically, that discussed that 

United Airlines is considering terminating its plan and dumping its 

liabilities on the PBGC. My understanding is that the claim the 

PBGC filed in the bankruptcy court earlier this year was for a $7.5 

billion claim for termination liability. 

What would be the effect on the PBGC if a pension plan the size 

of United and as underfunded as United’s plan were to be terminated and handed off to you? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Well, we don’t today anticipate that all the pension plans of United would come to us in the near future, but there 

is no way for us to control that, obviously, and that will play out 

in the marketplace with United’s efforts to emerge from Chapter 

11. So we are hopeful that they can do that, but we don’t have 

much control over that at our agency. 

18

The $7.5 billion number was a contingent claims or placeholder 

that we put into the record in a bankruptcy proceeding should the 

plans terminate and come to us. But it wasn’t our stating that we 

thought it was going to come to us. 

In terms of what it would do to our financial situation, as we 

mentioned, we are currently $5.7 billion in deficit. You correctly 

note our claim is for—our contingent claim is for $7.5 billion. However, we don’t guarantee 100 percent of benefits and we cap out 

benefits, especially for highly compensated individuals, which some 

people in the airlines would fit into. So I don’t have an exact number for you today, but we would anticipate more than $5 billion 

would be the impact upon us should all those plans come to the 

agency. Again, we are not predicting that to be the case. I am simply trying to be responsive to your question. 

Senator FITZGERALD. OK. I know the administration hasn’t made 

a proposal in this regard, but it seems to me that the premiums 

should be more risk-based than they now are. Could you explain 

to me to what extent premiums for PBGC insurance are risk-based 

today? I analogize to banking, where they went to risk-based premiums a number of years ago after the S&L debacle. 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Well, today there are, again, two elements to 

the premiums paid to PBGC under a single-employer program. One 

is a fixed rate, $19 per participant. There is no risk-based component to that. It is regardless of how risky a plan is to the agency. 

The variable rate premium is nine-tenths of one percent of socalled underfunding, but it is defined, again, based upon this current liability-type measure, which as we know, is wanting oftentimes during situations of bankruptcy and termination. So there is 

very little truly risk-based aspects to the current——

Senator FITZGERALD. Isn’t that kind of unfair to the—you do 

have many well-funded, responsibly managed plans in your fund, 

and isn’t it unfair that they are paying the same premiums as 

some terribly underfunded pensions? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Well, certainly those who are paying the $19 

and are overfunded and are AA or AAA credits, I imagine are paying more than what would be a typical private sector insurance 

rate for their plan in many cases. 

Senator FITZGERALD. It strikes me—I know that you guys have 

received a lot of flack from some in the corporate world that you 

are being real tough on the pensions, but I am giving you ideas on 

how you could be a whole lot tougher, aren’t I. Mr. Fisher. 

Mr. FISHER. If I could, Senator, just to jump in here, to clear 

something——

Senator FITZGERALD. Maybe you could pull the microphone a little closer. 

Mr. FISHER. Just to underscore a point I think Director 

Kandarian made a few minutes ago, there really are two ways to 

come at this. You are suggesting that premiums are too low given 

the level of risk. The other side of it, we would all rather see less 

risk in the system. 

So one reason why the administration hasn’t yet come forward 

with an issue on—recommendation on the premiums is to see how 

far can we go in reforming the measurement and the funding rules 

and then come back and look at the balance of how much risk is 

19

in the system, what should the premium structure be. But we fully 

take your point and we believe that a thorough review of the premium structure should be part of any comprehensive reform. 

Senator FITZGERALD. So the passage of your plan, if it helps to 

shore up the funding of the pension plans that are out there, could 

ultimately save the members in the PBGC from having to endure 

a premium increase and could save them money. 

Mr. KANDARIAN. I think that is right, yes. And I have testified 

several times before Congress in the last 2 years. I think in virtually all my testimonies, I have always started by saying our first 

choice is for the dollars to go into the plans to better fund the 

plans. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Rather than just into premiums. Now, I 

have to ask a question about two things, Mr. Kandarian. What 

about non-standard assets? I understand that in some cases, you 

have allowed some companies to put stock that is not publicly traded, for example, into their pension plans in lieu of cash. When do 

you allow that, and is it an exemption to rules that allows you to 

allow alternative investments? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Let me start by saying those are Title I issues 

under ERISA, which is really the jurisdiction of the Department of 

Labor that is not here today. I don’t want to speak for them, but 

I can give you some general guidelines and information on that. 

Current law prohibits companies from putting in more than 10 

percent of employer securities into their defined benefit pension 

plans in terms of assets. So we already have that safeguard. 

In addition, there are securities that sometimes require exemptions to place into these pension plans, regardless of the 10 percent 

level, because they may not be tradable or one thing or another. 

And that is looked at on a case-by-case basis by the Department 

of Labor. 

Senator FITZGERALD. In general, companies have to put cash or 

marketable securities into their plans? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Yes. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Do you ever require plans to collateralize, 

in effect, their unfunded pension liabilities? Can you take security? 

Can you take a lien on any corporate assets as a means of enforcing the company’s viability? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. I am trying to think here, but the place where 

I recall seeing security use would be in the cases of waivers granted by the IRS. Oftentimes in granting the waiver, the IRS will require securities being put up in lieu of cash. 

Senator FITZGERALD. But by and large, when a company files 

bankruptcy and terminates its plan, you don’t have any security for 

the unfunded liability, by and large. 

Mr. KANDARIAN. In bankruptcy, we are generally an unsecured 

creditor, that is correct. There are some exceptions to that, nonbankrupt subsidiaries. We have a stronger standing in bankruptcy 

as to non-bankrupt subsidiaries. We also have a stronger position 

in bankruptcy for missed minimum funding payments and for 

missed premiums to the agency. But generally speaking, that is a 

very small percentage of the exposure the agency faces. Typically, 

we get back less than 5 cents on the dollar in bankruptcy on the 

underfunded amount. 

20

Senator FITZGERALD. My final question, and then I will turn it 

over to Senator Akaka if he has any more questions of this panel, 

would be for Secretary Fisher. My understanding is that during the 

1990’s, Congress closed some opportunities in the tax code that 

companies formerly had to put more than the required payments 

into their pension plans and to get a tax deduction for those payments, and apparently during the 1990’s, we severely cut down the 

extent to which companies can get a tax deduction for contributions 

to their pension plans. And as a result, in the late 1990’s when corporate America was generally doing very well, we didn’t see any excess contributions to pension plans in the aggregate, and in fact, 

my understanding is there is an excise tax if you put more than 

your minimum necessary payments into your pension plan. 

Has the administration looked at all about perhaps enhancing 

the deductibility of corporate contributions to their pension plans? 

Mr. FISHER. Yes, Mr. Chairman. The administration has said 

that we are prepared to review the deductibility after we get to accurate measurements. We don’t think it is appropriate to have 

their cake and eat it, too, to have measures of funding as you have 

described of current liability, suggesting they are fully funded, 

when deep down on some other basis we realize they may not be 

as well funded. 

If we can get to a shared understanding of an accurate measure 

of the liability, then we are prepared to review the deductibility to 

try to provide a smoothing—excuse me, that is an inappropriate 

term—— [Laughter.] 

Less volatility in funding provided by companies. So we are prepared to review that. One does have to take care in designing those 

rules, especially for small companies——

Senator FITZGERALD. There can be abuses. 

Mr. FISHER. There can be abuses, and that is something the IRS 

and the Treasury will look out for. But we are prepared to review 

all those rules in the context of accurate measures of liabilities. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Senator Akaka, I don’t know if you have 

any questions. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have three 

more questions. 

Secretary Fisher, the administration’s proposal would use corporate bond rates for calculating future pension liabilities. As a result, businesses would be able to make smaller contributions to 

worker pensions and assume a higher rate of return. There are 

concerns that this proposal could drive pension deficits higher at 

the expense of workers’ pension savings. American taxpayers would 

be at risk if PBGC is underfunded and cannot pay the claims of 

failed pensions. 

What will it cost taxpayers if PBGC cannot pay the amount necessary to cover pension claims? 

Mr. FISHER. Senator, if I could take your question in two parts, 

first, I want to be very clear that the administration does not support simply using a corporate bond rate. If we simply took a single 

long-term corporate bond rate, it would have the implications that 

you suggest of potentially leading to underfunding. 

We feel, however, if you tie that to the use of the yield curve, as 

I have outlined, then we will get to better funding over time and 

21

more accurate funding for those plans with younger or older 

workforces. They will be appropriately funded. So the two go together. 

As the colloquy has already, I think, demonstrated, as has been 

brought out, the PBGC does not carry the full faith and credit of 

the United States. It is a government corporation, but does not 

have a call on the Treasury. So any underfunding of the PBGC, its 

deficit, which began to eat into its ability to meet its obligations, 

would be an issue that would be before Congress. It would be up 

to the then-Congress, together with the administration, to decide 

on whatever legislation would be needed. 

But in the absence of adequate funding to meet payments, which 

we don’t foresee in the immediate future, but given the current deficit looks to be in the years ahead, in the absence of that, something would have to give. Congress would have to enact legislation. 

Senator AKAKA. Thank you, Secretary Fisher. 

Director Kandarian, the management consulting firm Towers 

Perrin estimates that the administration’s proposal to alter funding 

rules could cut pension contributions by $50 billion annually during the first 3 years, which would leave more pensions underfunded. 

The question is, in your opinion, what effect would the administration’s proposal have on PBGC’s deficit? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. As Mr. Fisher has just testified, really, what we 

are trying to do is get the accurate measure of these liabilities. So 

if we can get that right measure utilized, over time, we believe 

these plans will be better funded. 

Now, I will also say that the administration’s proposal and other 

proposals up on the Hill contemplate a long-term corporate bond 

rate for 2 years, which is not the administration’s long-term proposal but it is a transition proposal, and yes, that would provide 

some funding relief in the short term, but we think that makes 

some sense given current economic situations, environment. 

Senator AKAKA. Mr. Kandarian, you and the Comptroller General 

testified 2 weeks ago before the House Committee on Education 

and the Workforce. At the hearing, Mr. Walker recommended that 

Congress consider ways to strengthen the funding of pension plans 

and to improve transparency by making information available to 

workers on the health of their pension plans. What are your views 

on these recommendations? 

Mr. KANDARIAN. Well, as I mentioned before, we welcomed GAO’s 

analysis. We have read it carefully. The administration, as Mr. 

Fisher has noted, is currently undertaking the task of fundamental 

review of the entire system, including the funding rules and including a number of factors, and we hope to have our proposal, our 

broader proposal outlined in the not-too-distant future. 

Senator AKAKA. I thank you, Mr. Secretary and Mr. Director, for 

your responses. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Thank you, Senator Akaka. 

Mr. Kandarian and Secretary Fisher, thank you so much for 

being here. We will take your written testimony and submit that 

for the record. Secretary Fisher, we wish you the best of luck after 

you leave the Treasury at the end of this month. As I said at the 

start of the hearing, I think you have done a wonderful job and 

22

should be commended for it, so best of luck to you. Thank you both 

very much for testifying. 

Now, we can bring the second panel of witnesses up to the table 

and we will take about a two-minute recess just so that people can 

stretch before we start with their testimony. Thank you. 

[Recess.] 

Senator FITZGERALD. I would now like to resume our hearing, 

and I would like to introduce our second panel of witnesses. 

Christopher O’Flinn is the Chairman of the ERISA Industry 

Committee and he serves as the Vice President of Corporate 

Human Resources at AT&T. Mr. O’Flinn also is a trustee of the 

Employee Benefits Research Institute and a member of the Advisory Council on Pensions to the New York State Controller. 

Kathy Cissna is the Director of Retirement Plans for R.J. Reynolds. She is here today to testify in her capacity as a board member of the American Benefits Council, ABC, which represents Fortune 1000 companies and service providers. ABC’s members either 

sponsor directly, administer, or service retirement, health, and 

stock compensation plans covering more than 100 million Americans. 

Professor Norman Stein, who I gather his mother lives in Illinois, 

he told me, is here today. Did you grow up in Illinois? Were you 

born in Illinois? 

Mr. STEIN. Well, it depends when you think childhood ends. I 

was 21 when my parents moved here, but they would say I grew 

up there. 

Senator FITZGERALD. You left when you were 21? 

Mr. STEIN. No, I moved there when I was 21. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Oh, you moved there when you were 21. 

Well, that is still enough to make you an honorary constituent, 

even though I gather you are in Alabama. 

Professor Stein is here today to speak on behalf of the Pension 

Rights Center. He is currently the Director of the Pension Counseling Clinic and the Douglas Arant Professor of Law at the University of Alabama. 

John Parks is the Vice President of the Pension Practice Council 

for the American Academy of Actuaries. In addition, he is the 

President of MMC&P Retirement Benefits Services and is an enrolled actuary with 41 years of experience in the actuarial and employee benefits field. 

J. Mark Iwry is a non-resident Senior Fellow in the Brookings 

Institution’s Economic Studies Program. Mr. Iwry served as benefits tax counsel of the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1995 

to 2001. Prior to joining the Treasury Department, he served as a 

partner in the law firm of Covington and Burling and specialized 

in pensions and other employee benefits. 

Again, I would like to thank all of you for being here to testify. 

In the interest of time, the Subcommittee would appreciate it if you 

could submit your full statements for the record and try and summarize your full statements in about a 5-minute opening statement. You could talk off the top of your head, as I am sure each 

of you are able, because you know this area so well, and we would 

appreciate that. 

23

1The prepared statement of Mr. O’Flinn with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 

72. 

Mr. O’Flinn—I know a lot of Flinns. I have never met an O’Flinn, 

but I gather that is probably Irish, like Fitzgerald. 

TESTIMONY OF CHRISTOPHER W. O’FLINN,1 VICE PRESIDENT, 

CORPORATE HUMAN RESOURCES, AT&T, ON BEHALF OF 

THE ERISA INDUSTRY COMMITTEE 

Mr. O’FLINN. Your guess is correct, Mr. Chairman. Let me add 

that my son is about to become a constituent when he moves to 

Chicago on the first of October. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Oh, great. 

Mr. O’FLINN. Thank you for the opportunity to address the Subcommittee on behalf of ERIC. ERIC has a unique interest in today’s hearing. Our members are all large employers who sponsor 

defined benefit plans, and as a group, they actually pay the bulk 

of the premium taxes collected by the PBGC. So our overriding interest is in maintaining both a vital defined benefit plan system 

and a financially sound PBGC along the lines that the Chairman 

outlined at the beginning of the hearing. 

If we have a message that we would like to leave with the 

Subcommittee today, it would be that any delay in enacting a composite corporate bond rate as a replacement for the 30-year Treasury bond which takes effect in January 2004 for the current liability test will prevent firms from contributing to the economic recovery and will drive even the largest U.S. companies away from the 

defined benefit system. 

We think that failure to act to replace the 30-year bond means 

that many companies will face totally unnecessary and draconian 

cash calls beginning in the spring of next year. And moreover, as 

we speak today, chief financial officers across the country are being 

advised of the likelihood of these cash calls, and that is having a 

chilling effect on continued benefit accruals, Mr. Chairman, under 

the defined benefit system, and also a chilling effect on other alternative uses for that cash, including investment in new jobs and investment in all capital investment, which is essential for our continued recovery. 

In other words, we think the time to act to replace the 30-year 

bond is now and only then will we have a stable platform of rational interest rates to move forward to consider other challenges in 

the pension law, some of which were very well described by Director Kandarian and Secretary Fisher. 

I would like to turn to the PBGC itself and echo the words of 

Minister Wicks that crisis is a word that should be used very carefully. We think that, as Secretary Fisher said when he began his 

testimony, there are issues and they are manageable now if we address them. Our concern is not that the issues are wrong or not 

there, but that they be addressed in a logical way that gives light 

to all the connected issues around them. 

Our written testimony goes into greater detail. I would like just 

to mention a few points in that testimony. 

First, even after becoming trustees of the Bethlehem Steel plan, 

the PBGC has a funded ratio of over 90 percent. And according to 

24

1The prepared statement of Ms. Cissna appears in the Appendix on page 98. 

our calculations, as supplemented by the American Society of Pension Actuaries, the assets of the PBGC divided by the current level 

of benefits, inflated as they are, are sufficient to pay, continue to 

pay benefits for approximately 18 years. That is assuming no 

growth in the assets and no additional premiums. 

In other words, Mr. Chairman, while this can be compared by 

some people to the S&L debacle, we don’t agree with that. We 

think it is a little bit early to use that kind of description. The 

agency is not insolvent. It is a long way from becoming insolvent. 

And yet, there are issues and they are serious issues affecting the 

pensions of Americans, including our employees, and we are concerned about them. But we want to move deliberately because of 

the related and consequential effects of some of the things being 

proposed by the administration. 

I would only mention a couple of these in the interest of time, 

but one of them is that the interest rate not only affects perhaps 

the premium structure of the plan and perhaps what might be the 

funding for corporations, but it affects the benefits of the employees 

who are relying on the PBGC to pay benefits. 

If the PBGC uses an overly conservative interest rate to discount—to arrive at the present liabilities of the benefits it has 

taken on, it will allocate more assets than necessary to pay for the 

guaranteed benefits, which has the highest order of priorities, or 

one of the highest order of priorities against the assets, leaving less 

assets available for the non-guaranteed benefits, meaning that 

those benefits won’t get paid to the employees. So it is very important to get this discount rate right for all of the people who are interested in the calculation, and that is not only the PBGC and the 

plan sponsors but the employees themselves. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be delighted to answer questions. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Thank you, Mr. O’Flinn. Ms. Cissna. 

TESTIMONY OF KATHY ANNE CISSNA,1 DIRECTOR OF RETIREMENT PLANS, R.J. REYNOLDS, ON BEHALF OF THE AMERICAN BENEFITS COUNCIL 

Ms. CISSNA. Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear today on behalf of the American Benefits Council, which is, 

as you said, a public policy organization representing principally 

Fortune 500 companies and other organizations that assists employers of all sizes in providing benefits to employees. 

Like you, the Council and its members are very concerned about 

the health of our defined benefit pension system, a system that is 

facing an unprecedented series of threats that require immediate 

policy action. 

In our view, the most pressing of these threats is the need to replace the obsolete 30-year Treasury bond interest rate for pension 

calculations with a realistic rate. Because of the discontinuation of 

the 30-year Treasury bond, its yield has reached historic lows and 

no longer correlates with rates on other long-term bonds. The use 

of this rate inflates pension contributions in excess of what is necessary to fund promised benefits. 

25

In 2003 and 2004 alone, contributions by Fortune 1000 companies are projected to exceed $80 billion per year, more than four 

times what was required just 2 years ago. More than half of these 

contributions are attributable to the inflationary effect of the broken 30-year Treasury rate. 

Today’s artificially inflated funding requirements harm employees, employers, and the economy at large. Facing pension contributions many times greater than anticipated, employers are having 

to defer steps such as hiring workers, building new plants, and 

pursuing research and development. For some employers, these inflated pension contributions are too much to bear and they have 

been forced to terminate or freeze their pension plans. 

The Council strongly endorses replacing the obsolete 30-year 

Treasury rate with a blend of high-quality corporate bond rates. A 

conservative corporate bond rate would be transparent, not subject 

to manipulation, and provide the kind of predictability that is necessary to plan pension costs. The use of a corporate bond rate, 

which is much more conservative than what pension funds will actually earn, would also ensure that plans are funded responsibly. 

This is why stakeholders from across the ideological spectrum, 

from business owners to organized labor, agree that a corporate 

bond rate should replace the 30-year Treasury rate. 

Senator Judd Gregg, Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, 

and Pensions Committee, has introduced a bill, S. 1550, that would 

do exactly that. We urge the Members of this Subcommittee to cosponsor S. 1550 and we recommend its prompt adoption by the 

Senate. 

Separately, the Treasury Department has put forward a proposal 

to utilize the so-called yield curve concept to replace the 30-year 

Treasury rate. While a fully-developed yield curve proposal still has 

not been issued, it does appear to involve a significant change to 

a more volatile and complicated structure under which the applicable interest rates would vary with the schedule and duration of 

payments due to each plan’s participants. 

We believe the yield curve and the associated proposals to eliminate interest rate averaging would exacerbate funding volatility 

and increase complexity, all for only a marginal potential increase 

in accuracy. 

Despite inclusion in legislation to be considered by the Senate Finance Committee as soon as Wednesday, there are still a host of 

unanswered questions created by the yield curve. In fact, the development of the methodology for developing the yield curve is yet undefined, as is its impact on funding rules in general or plans or 

participants. It leaves employers with many unanswered questions 

and is unrealistic to believe that all of the outstanding issues could 

be addressed in the short time available. 

To the extent that this type of major overhaul of our pension 

funding rules is considered, it should be done as a part of a more 

fundamental and thoughtful review by Congress. In the interim, we 

should be cautious of enacting the yet unexplored yield curve approach, but should move urgently to replace the 30-year Treasury 

rate with a corporate bond blend before any more American workers are frozen out of secured pensions. 

26

1The prepared statement of Mr. Stein appears in the Appendix on page 116. 

I also want to briefly address the concerns that we have heard 

raised about the financial status of the PBGC. While the PBGC’s 

deficit should be considered seriously, we do not see cause for 

alarm. Indeed, the PBGC has operated in a deficit position 

throughout much of its history. The PBGC has total assets in excess of $25 billion and earns 

money from investments on those assets. While the liabilities, as 

we have heard, exceed those investments, the pension obligations 

underlying those abilities come due not immediately, like the situation might have been in the S&L crisis, but over many decades. 

The relatively modest size of the PBGC’s deficit in relation to its 

assets ensures that it will remain solvent far into the future, a 

point that the PBGC itself has acknowledged repeatedly. 

The best recipe for a stable PBGC is to encourage healthy companies to remain in the defined benefit system, an aim that will be 

furthered by the policy changes we are advocating today. 

Thank you for this opportunity to appear, and I would be happy 

to answer questions. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Thank you very much. Professor Stein. 

TESTIMONY OF NORMAN P. STEIN,1 LAW PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA, ON BEHALF OF THE PENSION RIGHTS 

CENTER 

Mr. STEIN. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, I am 

Norman Stein. I teach at the University of Alabama School of Law 

and also direct the law school’s pension counseling clinic, whose 

funding from the Administration on Aging has made it possible for 

us to help hundreds of individuals with their pension problems. I 

appear here today on behalf of the Pension Rights Center, a consumer organization dedicated to protecting the pension rights of 

workers and their families. 

The issues you are looking at today fuse together broad issues of 

economic and social policy with arcane concepts of actuarial 

science. But these issues are critical, not only to the participants 

in defined benefit plans and to their families, but also to the economic and moral health of our Nation. The decisions that we make 

about this program today will determine the long-term sustainability of the traditional defined benefit plan, which is a crown 

jewel of our private sector retirement system. 

The first question I want to address briefly is whether the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is really in crisis. The PBGC’s 

deficit status is not a new phenomena. As the GAO has reported, 

over the last decade, the program has swung from a huge deficit 

to a huge surplus and now back to a deficit. How has this latest 

swing happened? Conventional wisdom has it that there are three 

significant reasons for PBGC’s current large deficit. 

First, economic factors have resulted in the termination of several defined benefit plans with large unfunded liabilities. Second, 

low interest rates have increased the present value of the PBGC’s 

benefit obligations. Third, the PBGC’s investment portfolio has declined in value. Some have called the combination of these three 

factors a perfect storm. 

27

But how long will this perfect storm last? Two of the three storm 

fronts, low interest rates and low equity returns, may be transitory. Interest rates might rise and equity markets might rebound. 

If this happens, the PBGC’s financial situation might improve dramatically and this perfect storm may turn out to have been the 

perfect tempest in a teapot. 

I want to turn now to funding of defined benefit plans. The current funding rules for defined benefit plans have not proven adequate to ensure that all defined benefit plans will be sufficiently 

well funded to satisfy their benefit commitments. I want to highlight two observations from our testimony, and not the observations 

where we happen to agree with the witnesses who just spoke but 

the two where we differ. 

First, some have suggested that the interest rate for discounting 

plan liabilities be increased from the 30-year Treasury rate to longterm corporate bond rates. The result of such a change in many 

cases would be a reduction of a firm’s plan contributions and an exacerbation of plan underfunding. We would urge that the appropriate discount rate should be pegged to riskless or nearly riskless 

instruments, such as government-issued bonds, because after all, 

the participants in the system perceive their guaranteed benefits as 

being without risk. 

The inappropriateness of the corporate bond rate can be put in 

perspective by looking at how the use of such a rate would affect 

PBGC’s own liabilities. I have spoken with several actuaries who 

estimate that such an alchemic change would reduce PBGC’s aggregated liabilities by between 5 and 15 percent, substantially reducing or perhaps almost eliminating the PBGC’s current deficit, 

which after all is the reason we are here today. 

Second, the administration has proposed that plan liabilities be 

discounted to present value using a yield curve derived from interest rates on high-quality corporate bonds. For some plans, a yield 

curve based on corporate bond rates would actually reduce funding 

obligations, which we think is counterproductive to the goal of improving overall plan funding. For other plans, those with a mature 

workforce and many retirees, a yield curve would substantially increase funding and perhaps force bankruptcies and create job loss 

in important sectors of our economy. 

I want to turn now briefly to some of our observations on other 

issues relevant to the PBGC. First, to strengthen the PBGC, Congress in the future might consider allocating appropriations to the 

PBGC from general revenues. Such appropriations are, we believe, 

justifiable, since many of the funding issues that defined benefit 

plans are today experiencing have resulted from the low interest 

rates created by Federal fiscal policy and the decision by the Federal Government to stop issuing 30-year Treasury obligations. And 

as you have already suggested, Mr. Chairman, to some extent, we 

have a tax today already, but it happens to be on those people who 

sponsor healthy defined benefit plans and it might be fairer to have 

that burden spread to a broader tax base. 

Second, to stem the flight of employers from the defined benefit 

system and leaving the system’s unfunded liabilities for those employees who remain in the system, we might also consider imposing 

28

1The prepared statement of Mr. Parks with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 

125. 

an exit charge or withdrawal liability when firms terminate their 

defined benefit plans. 

Third, rules should be adopted to deter practices where firms siphon off plan assets to non-pension purposes in years when economic conditions are favorable, thus diminishing the plan’s cushion 

for harder economic times. 

Finally, some have suggested reducing the interest rates used to 

value single-sum payments from pension plans. While the Pension 

Rights Center has never been an advocate of lump sum distribution 

options, it has always taken the position that once a firm promises 

an employee a benefit, it should not be able to break that promise. 

Employees view pension plans as contracts and the interest rate 

used for valuing lump sums is a part of those contracts. Those who 

would change the interest rates are, in effect, asking Congress to 

relieve them of the bargain they made with their workers. 

I would be happy to take any questions. Thank you. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Thank you, Professor. Mr. Parks. 

TESTIMONY OF JOHN P. PARKS,1 VICE PRESIDENT, PENSION 

PRACTICE COUNCIL, AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ACTUARIES 

Mr. PARKS. Chairman Fitzgerald, thank you for inviting me to 

testify on defined benefit pension plan funding. It is a personal 

honor of a lifetime for me to be here. 

My name is John Parks and I am Vice President of the Pension 

Practice Council of the American Academy of Actuaries. The Academy is a nonpartisan public policy organization that represents 

actuaries and assists the public policy process through the presentation of clear and objective actuarial analysis. 

The combined impact of the decline in the equity market and reduced interest rates are currently creating a funding challenge for 

defined benefit pension plans in our country. It is important also 

to remember that for at least the last 10 years, there has been a 

steady shift away from the guaranteed retirement income from 

defined benefit plans and toward the self-annuitization through defined contribution plans. 

The danger in this transfer of financial mortality risks to individuals is largely unseen because the people affected have mostly not 

yet retired. We must deal, therefore, not only with the current financial conditions, but also with the longer-range challenges facing 

defined benefit plans in general. 

It is a critical part of this retirement economics challenge to see 

that defined benefit plans are supported and plan sponsors are provided with the incentive to maintain and cultivate these programs. 

Some special advantages of these plans include, for employees, a 

secure, stable income guaranteed for life, and a reduction in the 

spreading of mortality and investment risk. For employers, these 

plans provide contribution flexibility and maintain a stable workforce. For the Nation, defined benefit plans help to reduce our dependence on social programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and they reduce poverty among the elderly. 

29

In 1975, just after the Employee Retirement Income Security Act 

we signed into law, 40 percent of the labor force participated in DB 

plans and 16 percent participated in a DC plan. Today, however, 

the reverse is true. Only 21 percent participate in a DB plan while 

46 percent participate in defined contribution plans. Our concern is 

not just the funding of DB plans. Our concern is the survival of the 

DB plans as a primary source of financial security for retirees. 

The first issue I would like to discuss is funding. We must simplify the rules. Years of almost annual amendments to ERISA have 

continually increased the administrative burdens on those who try 

to maintain defined benefit programs. Those companies who sponsored DB plans are now questioning the future of their programs 

under the current financial strains of the economy, mandated rigid 

and short-range irrational minimum and maximum funding requirements, arcane pension laws and regulations. Simplification is 

necessary to reduce the regulatory cost of DB plans and level the 

playing field and provide a viable system with stable rules to attract new plan adoption, all of which are needed to meet the financial security of retiring Americans. 

Just one quick example. There are 13 different amortization 

rules for paying off liabilities in the funding code under Internal 

Revenue Code Section 412. Our suggestions include complete rewriting of the minimum funding standards and providing for fewer 

and faster amortization periods. 

The second funding concern is the maximum tax deductible contribution limitation. These funding rules create volatile contribution patterns and discourage adequate funding margins. Almost by 

definition, the rules inhibit contributions when the economy is 

strong and require substantial contributions when the economy declines and plan sponsors can least afford them. Some of our suggestions for revising these rules include increasing tax deductible contribution maximum to reflect increases in unfunded liability, allowing all negotiated benefits to be reflected, reflecting lump sum payments in current liability, and allowing a deduction for normal 

costs in all years. 

The next funding concern are the rules relating to withdrawals 

from pension plans. Incentives for employers to increase their funding margins may not work unless we also address the one-sided nature of the funding equations. Employers who try to protect the 

plan by making additional contributions have very little opportunity to use those contributions if it turns out they weren’t needed. Our suggestions would be only to allow reversions if assets exceed some very high threshold, such as 150 percent of current liability. 

Fixing the discount rate—current law defines this interest rate 

in terms of 30-year Treasury notes. This rate is used for the determination of cash contributions, variable PBGC rates, and other key 

pension calculations. They have been artificially depressed, rising 

the current measure of costs associated with plans. Our recommendation is that a replacement benchmark using high-grade 

long-term corporate bonds is a reasonable proposal consistent with 

the intended measurement. However, while the various funding 

rules are studied, the period of temporary enactment should be 5 

years rather than 2 or 3 years as proposed. 

30

1The prepared statement of Mr. Iwry appears in the Appendix on page 142. 

In summary, defined benefit plans, once the most common form 

of retirement security for American workers, have lost much of 

their attraction for corporations. The exodus of the PBGC premium 

payer, a risk that has not been receiving proper attention regrettably continues. The complicated solvency rules with 3 years of low 

interest rates and market returns have created a funding crisis. At 

the same time, plan participants are starting to appreciate the 

value of being covered under a DB plan. The high risk of personal 

ruin through self-annuitization is yet to be fully realized. 

In our haste to fix the funding crisis, we must be careful not to 

create an environment that discourages the continuation of existing 

DB plans. Thank you. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Thank you very much, Mr. Parks. Mr. Iwry. 

TESTIMONY OF J. MARK IWRY,1 SENIOR FELLOW, THE 

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION 

Mr. IWRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Having spent much of the 

previous decade in the Treasury Department regulating private 

pensions and benefits, including involvement in the previous efforts 

a decade ago to reform the pension funding rules and shore up 

PBGC’s finances, I am convinced, Mr. Chairman, that Congress 

does have to act both in the short- and long-term here, but that 

there is no ‘‘silver bullet,’’ no simple solution to these problems. 

That is because Congress has to take into account several different 

interests that are highly legitimate, that are in tension with one 

another, and that must be balanced against one another. 

Congress needs to begin with short-term funding relief and then 

follow on with permanent, comprehensive improvement of the funding rules that would specifically require more adequate funding 

over the long term to protect workers’ retirement security, with 

special attention to reducing chronic underfunding. And as Mr. 

Kandarian and Mr. Fisher suggested, Congress needs to improve 

disclosure, both the transparency and the promptness of disclosure 

regarding the material facts of pension plan funding. 

At the same time, Congress needs to take into account the potential impact of large funding demands on a plan sponsor’s overall financial condition and on economic growth. It has to minimize funding volatility for plan sponsors so that the required increases in 

funding from year to year follow a reasonably smooth path. 

As Mr. Kandarian has said, the deficit reduction contribution, 

that is, the minimum funding requirement that is accelerated when 

a plan falls below a certain funded threshold, is too volatile. It 

starts too late. It ends too early. The funding path it puts plans on 

is not optimal. 

The targets that the deficit reduction contribution are keyed to 

need to be revisited. The rules allow inappropriate holidays to companies that should be contributing, as the Bethlehem Steel case illustrates. And employers are precluded from funding for lump-sum 

distributions even if those impose higher liabilities than the annuities that employees could elect. IRS administrative guidance, notice 90–11, precludes the company from actually taking into account the value of the lump-sum distribution to the extent that it 

31

might impose more of a funding obligation than a life annuity, and 

that needs to be fixed. 

While doing all of this, Congress needs to protect the reasonable 

expectations of employees and retirees with respect to their promised benefits, and to the extent possible, avoid discouraging employees from continuing to provide pension benefits. We also need 

to avoid penalizing those plan sponsors that are funding their 

plans adequately and that are, like the PBGC, not part of the problem but, in fact, part of what is right with the system. 

More generally, we need to continue encouraging employers to 

adopt and to continue maintaining defined benefit pension plans. 

This may suggest an emphasis on requiring sponsors to fund adequately in preference to directly restricting their ability to provide 

benefit improvements and in preference to curtailing the PBGC’s 

guarantee. 

To that end, I think that the defined benefit system would benefit from a resolution of the cash balance controversy that would 

settle the law governing these plans in a reasonable way. 

A major portion of the defined benefit universe in recent years 

has taken the form of cash balance plans, as hundreds of plan 

sponsors have shifted from the traditional defined benefit plan to 

this new hybrid format. The precise application of the governing 

statutes to these plans has been the subject of uncertainty, litigation, and controversy, as you know, Mr. Chairman. 

I suggest that Congress could and should resolve the cash balance controversy in a way that gives older workers substantial protection from the adverse effects of a conversion while allowing employers to maintain cash balance plans without concern that they 

would be treated as if they were age discriminatory or otherwise 

in violation of the law, and that allows employers the reasonable 

flexibility that they need to change their plans, to make amendments going forward, and the flexibility they need to determine 

how, but not whether, to protect older workers in these conversions. 

I will be happy to answer any questions, Mr. Chairman. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Thank you very much, Mr. Iwry. 

Ms. Cissna and Mr. O’Flinn, Mr. Iwry suggested that he felt that 

Mr. Kandarian and Secretary Fisher were correct in calling for enhanced disclosure and transparency. What is wrong with enhanced 

disclosure and transparency insofar as don’t we want pension plan 

beneficiaries to know the status of the plans they are in and don’t 

we want shareholders of a corporation to know the full extent of 

any problems that a company may have in an underfunded pension 

plan? 

Ms. CISSNA. I think it would be erroneous to say that anybody 

is not in favor of accurate disclosure. I think the only thing that 

concerns Council members is that good transparent disclosure be 

properly representative to the people it is being directed to. 

I personally, as a plan sponsor, as a plan administrator, am concerned that certain levels of panic could be created by inappropriate disclosures to the extent that participants in a plan might 

begin doing irresponsible things, like taking lump-sum distributions when perhaps that is not in their best interest, because as 

you mentioned yourself, the rules for how you determine what is 

32

underfunding are so complicated that most of our participants don’t 

really appreciate them. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Mr. O’Flinn. 

Mr. O’FLINN. I would agree with Kathy’s comments, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I would also agree with the prior panel that there 

is a need for additional disclosure. For example, under the current 

disclosure rules dictated by FASB, you would be hard pressed to 

estimate the future cash contributions required to the plan. So if 

you were interested in the free cash flow of the company, you basically might be missing a big element unless you hired actuaries to 

dig through the material and make their own estimates. 

So we would agree, there is need for additional disclosure. The 

particular disclosure that—we think that we would like to hear 

what FASB has to say about that. They are aware of these problems. They have an ongoing task force addressing them. If there is 

a theme to the overall hearing, Mr. Chairman, that we think fits 

here, it is what is the rush? Let us let the experts fully flesh out 

everything that happens from what is being proposed here before 

we commit to a specific set of actions. 

And in terms of the termination benefits, termination benefits 

basically evaluate the plan as if everyone is leaving the day of the 

valuation. So all of the early retirement benefits, which normally 

would not be used, since most people retire later than the early retirement benefits, come into play and explode the liabilities of the 

plan. 

Senator FITZGERALD. But when a plan terminates, don’t you 

often have people leaving, people retiring early, taking money right 

away? So if the company goes bankrupt and terminates its plan, 

don’t you have a flood of claims all of a sudden on the plan? 

Mr. O’FLINN. Yes, you do, but let me take some figures from the 

PBGC’s last annual report. They ensure $1.5 or $1.6 trillion in benefits and approximately $35 billion of that, which is a little bit 

more than 2 percent, is underfunding attributable to so-called financially weak companies. Now, for disclosure on those 2 percent, 

should everyone behind the $1.6 billion [sic] do an evaluation and 

publicize it as if they were going to go out of business tomorrow 

when the likelihood of that happening is extremely small? 

Senator FITZGERALD. Mr. Iwry. 

Mr. IWRY. Mr. Chairman, I think that the representatives of the 

ERISA Industry Committee and the American Benefits Council 

have a responsible and legitimate concern regarding the risk of a 

type of disclosure that would be not constructive and not helpful 

and potentially not cost effective. But I do think there is a reasonable middle ground here. 

We certainly need to improve disclosure and there are at least 

two specific ways in which that could realistically happen. One is 

where companies are already sponsoring very underfunded plans. 

Right now, it is an aggregate of $50 million of underfunding, which 

perhaps should be made more sensitive to the actual extent of 

underfunding as a percentage rather than just the absolute amount 

and maybe even sensitive to the financial condition of the plan 

sponsor. 

But we now have these disclosures that you alluded to earlier 

that are confidential and that to the PBGC when underfunding has 

33

exceeded a certain amount. Those ought to be made public, but not 

to the extent they would compromise proprietary corporate information, and that is a large part of the concern that the plan sponsors have. You can disclose the funded status of the plan. You can 

disclose the assets and liabilities without disclosing the company’s 

own finances in a way that isn’t already required to be disclosed 

by law. 

Second, you can disclose liabilities in a more accurate way. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Isn’t the problem that the financially weakest companies don’t want that information disclosed because then 

everybody would know how weak they are? 

Mr. O’FLINN. That is right, and I think also some financially 

stronger companies don’t want certain information disclosed because of competitive considerations, where the securities laws and 

other rules already require a certain amount of disclosure. But certainly, we can have much improved disclosure of the plans’ funded 

status, not just information provided to the PBGC, but provided to 

employees, investors, and everyone else. 

And then you could have termination liability, which as you indicate, is often a realistic depiction of what would happen if the plan 

actually terminated in the near future, reflecting early retirements 

and plan shutdowns that don’t get taken into account under current, so-called current liability determinations. You can have this 

termination liability as an additional disclosure for companies that 

are less solid. That is, one could consider whether termination liability ought to be required to be disclosed once a company is either below investment grade in its ratings or is otherwise—or is 

relatively underfunded in its pension plans. In other words, once 

a company ceases to be sound and soundly funding its plan, employees have a different degree of interest in knowing what might 

happen in the then somewhat more realistic scenario that the plan 

would terminate. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Professor Stein, you said in your opening 

statement that you believed that we should not adopt a high-grade 

corporate bond discount rate, that it should be based on as riskless 

a rate as possible, on a Treasury note of some kind. Given that we 

are losing the 30-year Treasury bond, that it is being done away 

with and that it is more and more scarce, are you suggesting that 

we start using intermediate grade Treasuries as a discount rate? 

Mr. STEIN. Well, my solution would be to begin reissuing 30-year 

Treasuries and, in fact, reissuing bonds of even longer duration. I 

think the government’s decision to stop issuing 30-year Treasury 

bonds, I think has had perhaps some good consequences, which are 

some speculative potential good consequences down the road, but 

I think they have also created problems, particularly in the area 

of pension plans. 

I think also for funding, there is some discussion now among actuaries about whether plans should be funded in a way similar to 

what the yield curve suggests, that there should be more of a 

matching of assets with liabilities, and if that is to happen, a lot 

of the way it is going to happen is because the government starts 

issuing notes of longer duration. 

Senator FITZGERALD. What happens, Ms. Cissna, if we do adopt 

a high-grade corporate reference and then all of a sudden the 30-

34

year Treasury does come back? After all, Secretary Fisher is leaving the Treasury at the end of the month and I think he was one 

of the people who was behind doing away with the 30-year Treasury. Then would you stick with the high-grade corporates or would 

you want to go back to the 30-year Treasury, even though it would 

increase your payments? Wouldn’t that be a better——

Ms. CISSNA. Well, I think that that is somewhat hypothetical and 

I am not sure that I am in any means able to answer a hypothetical question like that. I still think that you have to focus on 

the fact that the high-grade corporate bond rate is still a very conservative rate when compared to the way pension funds are actually going to be invested. And to the extent that you have a divergence between the actual investment ability of the plan and the 

way you have to value its liabilities, these are the things that are 

going to lead employers to be afraid of defined benefit plans, afraid 

of the system, and to look more and more at freezing and terminating plans. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Mr. Parks, what do you think of the Treasury’s idea for using a yield curve? 

Mr. PARKS. Our concern about the use of a yield curve is the implication of complexity in the calculations that it would mandate 

for each individual and each pension plan. I am not certain that 

long range, it might be a logical solution, but the current set of 

funding rules as it relates to defined benefit plans are already a 

collage of confusion, and I am afraid that this imposition of the 

yield curve without knowing the implications of all those confusing 

calculations that are currently necessary is premature and we 

would like to have the opportunity to study it in depth. 

Senator FITZGERALD. But it is true that it is now considered a 

best practice, isn’t it, in the actuarial world to try and match the 

liabilities with a similarly maturing asset, is it not? 

Mr. PARKS. I believe that is a best practice in the financial world. 

I am not sure that from the perspective of the actuarial implications in a defined benefit pension plan we yet know that. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Would it concern you that if we don’t use 

a yield curve, we would just be adopting a higher discount rate 

from corporate Treasuries than we have now with the government 

risk-free Treasury bonds? If we just adopt a corporate bond rate as 

our discount rate, we are just allowing companies to put a whole 

lot less into their pensions, aren’t we? 

Mr. PARKS. Well, you can adopt a corporate bond discount rate, 

adjusted in some way to compensate for that, such as subtracting 

a certain amount of basis points or multiplying by a percentage. 

Senator FITZGERALD. I don’t think that is what these companies 

have in mind. [Laughter.] 

Ms. CISSNA. Mr. Chairman, if I could interject, I think that our 

position would be that, as I mentioned, the corporate bond blend 

is still a conservative approach to valuing the liabilities of vibrant 

pension plans, and the more that we can do to continue to support 

the defined benefit system and to continue to allow employers to 

fund responsibly without being burdened by the volatility and the 

unpredictability that may be established through the use of a yield 

curve, we are going to be better off. 

35

Senator FITZGERALD. I wonder if Mr. Parks would like to comment—I gather you have some great familiarity with ERISA. You 

have to deal with it. Actuaries have to actually plod through the 

statute and figure out what some of the definitions, such as current 

liability, mean. The case of Bethlehem Steel illustrates this well—

in its last filing, Bethlehem Steel on a current liability basis was 

84 percent funded. But then when the PBGC took it over, it found 

that it was actually only 54 percent funded on a termination basis 

because the problem is that the legislative definition of current liability is really more a political definition as far as I can tell than 

an actuarial definition. 

The bottom line is, current liability under ERISA is something 

far less than the actual amount of money that needs to be put into 

the plan to pay the benefits that are owed. Is that accurate? Have 

you figured out why this is so? 

Mr. PARKS. You are correct in analyzing that the current liability 

definition is extremely complex. Actuaries love complexity, but 

even to me, it is confusing. 

But maybe perhaps the best way to describe it, and in a broad 

way, the difference between the termination liability and the calculation of current liability, with all of its machinations, is that 

current liability assumes that the plan is an ongoing entity and 

termination liability is the end of the line and, therefore, you have 

to cash in the chips and measure it at one point in time. On an 

ongoing basis, we can consider factors such as rates of return 

which reflect the equity markets. But on a termination basis, we 

have to pay the piper and measure as of this point in time. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Well, it seems to make sense, then, to calculate it in both ways, right? Termination basis and the so-called 

current liability and have disclosure of both in case the plan does, 

in fact, terminate, like apparently United Airlines is considering 

terminating and they have a termination liability of $7.5 billion. 

Would any of you care to comment? 

Mr. O’FLINN. I would, Mr. Chairman. First, Bethlehem Steel and 

all the steel companies got some relief from the funding rules when 

they were last revised in 1994, and to the extent that contributed 

to their underfunding, I think it is a little unfair to say the current 

law, which essentially does not completely apply to them, is a reason for changing the current law. 

In terms of the disclosure, I wonder what the purpose of the disclosure is. What is the purpose of the vast majority of companies 

disclosing a liability which the high probability is they will never 

pay, recognizing that it could have a chilling effect on even creating 

that liability, which has certain legitimate purposes. In other 

words, a lot of the liability is early retirement benefits and they are 

very beneficial to people who are being laid off from an ongoing 

concern. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Don’t we want the members in the plan to 

pressure their companies to better fund their pensions and don’t we 

want to deter companies from promising things to their workers 

that at the end of the day they can’t deliver? Haven’t we been 

going on too long in this country with companies, maybe in union 

negotiations, saying, hey, we can’t give you a raise this year, but 

I will tell you what. We will sweeten your pension benefits. And 

36

the reality is, they have no ability to ever pay those sweetened pension benefits. Aren’t we just allowing companies to make promises 

that they can’t keep, and then when the workers don’t get their 

pension at the end of the day, isn’t the rug being pulled out from 

under them? Mr. Iwry. 

Mr. IWRY. Mr. Chairman, that is why I suggest, consistent with 

what you were saying earlier, that there be disclosure of the liability under both scenarios, that is, ongoing and in the event that the 

plan terminates—the current liability and the termination liability, 

or liability on a termination basis—at least in circumstances where 

the second scenario, that is, that the plan will not continue, becomes more likely. Perhaps it is a reasonable weighing of costs and 

benefits here to trigger that second disclosure in circumstances 

where that scenario of termination does become more realistic. 

I would add, with respect to your broader point about the negotiated increases, that in devising an appropriate policy to restrain 

unfunded benefit improvements and to protect the PBGC and ultimately the taxpayers from inappropriate shifting of liability, we do 

need to take into account, in fairness, that the union plans typically are so-called flat benefit plans. That is, they pay a benefit 

equal to X-dollars per month for each year that an employee works 

for the company. If the employee’s wages go up, as people’s wages 

normally go up over their career, that formula doesn’t keep up with 

the wage increases or with cost-of-living increases unless it is 

amended from time to time to increase that dollar amount. 

By contrast, in the salaried world, the plans are typically based 

upon pay. They provide a pension that is a multiple of people’s 

final average salary or career average salary or make contributions 

in a cash balance plan that are proportional to that year’s pay. So 

they amount to something like career average salaries. So when 

that plan continues unamended, it is keeping up with inflation and, 

indeed, it is keeping up with salary increases in a way that the 

unionized flat benefit plan is not. 

And, of course, that has served the purposes of management and 

unions over the years. The union has been able to negotiate an increase every 3 or 5 years during their collective bargaining and 

bring that back to their members. But to the extent that it is just 

keeping up with cost of living or with wage increases, we might 

want to take that into account when we set a restraining policy 

there. 

Mr. STEIN. There is another side to that. We actually talk about 

this also in our written testimony. But for the most part, the kind 

of plans that Mark has just described, negotiated plans and a flat 

benefit formula, the quirk in the funding rules makes it—means 

you can’t fund these inflationary increases, which we know are 

going to happen, and in order to kind of treat these plans the same 

way we would treat final pay plans, you would probably want to 

address this on both the funding side and the guarantee side. 

Senator FITZGERALD. You can’t fund benefit increases that are 

going to take place because of inflation? 

Mr. STEIN. In a final pay plan, you effectively can. But in these 

kinds of plans that Mark is describing, generally, you cannot. 

Mr. IWRY. Mr. Chairman, I think our point is—I agree with Professor Stein—the union bargained plan cannot anticipate the future 

37

negotiated increases, even though it is understood that it is likely 

the plan will be updated to keep up with inflation or wage increases. But until that increase has actually been negotiated and 

gone into effect, the actuary can’t anticipate it in the funding. So 

the rules are skewed to some degree or structured in a way that 

has the effect of discouraging adequate funding. 

That is not to say that is the only reason. In some cases, management will choose not to fund those plans too much, partly out 

of concern that if they create a surplus of assets in the plan, then 

the union will come back and ask for increases because the money 

is there. So there are a lot of dynamics there. 

What I am suggesting is, that in restraining increases that may 

not be prudent and may not be sufficiently well funded to be fully 

responsible, we take into account the desire, I think, of everyone 

on this panel and the previous panel to maintain the health of the 

overall defined benefit system and to continue encouraging employers to sponsor and improve defined benefit plans. 

Senator FITZGERALD. What about all the exemptions and loopholes that have developed in recent years? We talked about Bethlehem Steel not making any payments for 5 years. That was apparently the result of the last time Congress amended ERISA in 1994. 

It seems like that was a very unwise amendment that we gave at 

the time. Does anybody know specifically where that exemption is 

in the law and shouldn’t those loopholes be closed? Professor Stein. 

Mr. STEIN. There are a number of ways in which both the variable premium structure and the deficit reduction contribution don’t 

work exactly as we would like them, and they tend to be fairly 

technical. 

One problem with the deficit reduction contribution is if a plan 

has a funding credit, which is a complex idea, but it can date back 

to contributions that were made years and years earlier, even 

though the plan now is seriously underfunded, those credits can actually substantially reduce the contributions you would want those 

plans to make. 

But there are—generally speaking, we agree with much of what 

the PBGC has said in earlier testimony. We think that the variable 

premium and the deficit reduction contribution need some fixing. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Mr. Parks, I know you mentioned in your 

opening statement enhancing the tax deductibility of, I guess you 

might call them excess pension contributions and the tax deductibility of which was reduced in the 1990’s. Do you have any specific 

recommendations in that regard? A company, I gather, cannot go 

over its required contribution before it starts incurring tax penalties? 

Mr. PARKS. That is correct, and as a matter of fact, they may 

even be compelled to pay an excise tax if they contribute in excess 

of the maximum deductible contributions. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Why would we impose an excise tax on 

somebody doing it? I gather there were problems with small companies maybe dumping money into the executive pension fund, but 

can’t we target a law better? Mr. Iwry, you were at the Treasury 

Department at the time. 

Mr. IWRY. I was, Mr. Chairman, and I think that you may be referring principally to the so-called full funding limitation, which 

38

was imposed more stringently in 1987. Has just been phased down 

and will be repealed 31⁄2 months from now. 

Now, as you might expect from having grappled with the statute 

before this hearing, there is not just one full-funding limitation, 

there are two, but the one that had presented the most problems 

or aroused the most concern on the part of plan sponsors trying to 

fund fully in good times has been slated for repeal and will go out 

of existence on January 1. Now, I am not suggesting that that necessarily is enough and that we ought to stop there, but——

Senator FITZGERALD. There are other full-funding limitations 

elsewhere in the statute. 

Mr. IWRY. Yes, and they serve a reasonable purpose. The question is whether they ought to be fine-tuned. 

Senator FITZGERALD. It sounds like the whole statute needs to be 

dramatically simplified, and maybe we should have some actuaries 

working on this as opposed to politicians. [Laughter.] 

Mr. STEIN. There is actually a very interesting article in the recent edition of your magazine, Contingencies, by an actuary called 

Jeremy Gold, who is sort of an iconoclast, but he has suggested a 

very simple way of funding plans, which is you basically have a 

corridor based on current liabilities and you can go so much below 

it and so much above it, and if you get too far below, you have to 

start making immediate contributions to bring it up to whatever 

the minimum target is, whatever the floor is. He says, basically, 

just establish a floor and ceiling based on the liabilities. 

Senator FITZGERALD. But your definition of what your current liabilities are is very important——

Mr. STEIN. That would have to be worked out——

Senator FITZGERALD [continuing]. And I gather there is a lot of 

mischief in that. 

Mr. STEIN. That would have to be worked out and it would be 

a miracle if you could work it out in a way that avoided complexity. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Now, I am not going to go on much longer. 

The afternoon has been dragging on. You all have been terrific witnesses. But I know, Ms. Cissna and Mr. O’Flinn, you were—I think 

Mr. O’Flinn specifically—you made a reference to it is really only 

about 2 percent of the companies that are financially weak and 

have really badly funded pension plans. That would mean that 

most companies with defined benefit plans have managed them responsibly, they are in pretty good fiscal shape, and the trouble we 

are in is resulting from a very small number of bad actors. 

I would think, therefore, that it would be in the interest of the 

98 percent of companies that are strong and are good actors to get 

really tough on the ones who aren’t, because ultimately, the wellfunded plans may have to pick up the tab for the poorly-funded 

plans in terms of increased insurance premiums to the PBGC. 

Mr. O’FLINN. That is a fair characterization, Mr. Chairman. I 

think in terms of disclosure, something along the lines that Mr. 

Iwry was describing earlier, we have much less concern with than 

a broad-brush approach that puts out data that may be misinterpreted and is really irrelevant to a member of the 98 percent. 

Senator FITZGERALD. But a company that has a very well funded 

pension plan, even on a termination basis, I would think they 

might even want that information out, because then analysts could 

39

see, and their employees could see that it is really well funded. 

Maybe they wouldn’t want their workers pressing for more pension 

sweeteners, but to some extent, that would help some of the companies. It might remove some doubt about whether a company’s pension plan has a severe problem. 

Mr. O’FLINN. I think that many companies have early retirement 

benefits to service a very small portion of the population which can 

be expected to leave before what you might call expected retirement, and that is their primary purpose. To do evaluation which 

basically assumes that many more people—virtually all the people 

are going to use those who qualify for them at the time of the valuation is—I don’t know what you would call it, a red herring, something that would involve hours of explanation to people who, frankly, have enough trouble understanding the current liability test 

now. I am speaking from the employees’ point of view. 

To explain that there is a government-required number, that, on 

its face, would raise concern because I don’t believe very many 

companies are funded, well funded on a termination basis, at least 

the large companies in our organization who maintain robust early 

retirement benefits. They are funded for how they are expected to 

use them, but they are not funded on a termination basis. 

Ms. CISSNA. Nor do they anticipate terminating. 

Mr. O’FLINN. Exactly. They are funded for how they are expected 

to occur, with the advice of their actuaries and accountants who 

are monitoring their situation. 

Ms. CISSNA. And, Mr. Chairman, if I could add, I think it is 

also—I think you will agree with me on this, I don’t know, but fairly short sighted to assume that the sponsors of reasonably wellfunded plans aren’t doing a lot of asset liability modeling anyway, 

looking at when those assets are going to be required, what the 

payment schedules are going to be. It is not like these things are 

being ignored completely. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Do you think, both Ms. Cissna and Mr. 

O’Flinn, that your members object if there were a requirement that 

plans whose funding falls below a certain level be frozen, that they 

couldn’t sweeten benefits anymore, all to shelter the PBGC from 

further risk? 

Ms. CISSNA. Well, freezing is a tough word. I mean, freezing is 

a lot different also than not enhancing. If you are going to tell my 

participants that they can’t earn another penny after today——

Senator FITZGERALD. Well, if the plan is——

Ms. CISSNA [continuing]. Because on a termination basis, which 

the plan does not intend to do, it looks somewhat unfunded. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Well, I think the administration’s proposal 

is if you are not 50 percent funded on a current liability basis, then 

you can’t sweeten your pensions at all. To me, it should be a much 

stricter requirement than that. I would think if you weren’t 100 

percent funded, that you shouldn’t be able to sweeten your benefits. 

I think that would protect the other companies, the 90 percent that 

are healthy and financially responsible with their plans. 

Mr. O’FLINN. We do think that work needs to be done on what 

liability the PBGC takes over, particularly recently created liability. And, of course, the law has some relief in that regard already. 

But remember, Mr. Chairman, there are new companies that start 

40

pension plans that are maybe far away from 100 percent funding. 

So you would have to take into consideration that category, as well. 

I agree, a well-established plan would aim for probably somewhat 

higher than 100 percent funding on an ongoing basis, but it may 

take a while to get there. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Professor Stein. 

Mr. STEIN. Yes. There is an alternative path which some people 

have suggested, which is if you have a seriously underfunded plan, 

to try and develop rules that will allow, as Kathy said, the regular 

benefits to continue but to ensure that the deficit doesn’t grow, that 

is, all new benefits would have to be immediately funded and the 

deficit can’t become any worse, that is, you amortize the deficit 

over some period of time, perhaps an extended period of time, 

which would at least say to the PBGC, this plan can continue. We 

don’t have to prematurely terminate it. Our situation, it might not 

get better, but at least it won’t get worse. 

Senator FITZGERALD. Mr. Iwry. 

Mr. IWRY. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I agree. We have a 5-year phasein now, as you know, of the PBGC’s guarantee, so that benefits 

added shortly before termination are not fully guaranteed. Now, 

that may not go far enough toward protecting the PBGC, but I 

think the administration’s proposal to not only prevent sweetening 

of benefits, as you say, but to prevent continuation of the existing 

level of benefits—that is, their proposal to require freezing of additional accruals and suspension of lump-sum payments in excess of 

$5,000 per person—I think those proposals are probably too draconian, that we ought to be looking at accelerated funding of what 

are really new promises. 

And again, I would suggest taking into account the cost of living 

updating that occurs automatically in the non-union plans but has 

to be negotiated periodically in the union plans, putting that into 

the mix when we think about what the policy ought to be with respect to sweeteners. To what extent is that meeting reasonable expectations of the workers, who, after all, don’t control the funding 

of their sponsors’ plans and, of course, don’t control the financial 

condition of their sponsors. 

Senator FITZGERALD. We are going to close shortly, and I want 

to ask one final question. As all of you know, General Motors has 

taken some dramatic actions to strengthen its pension funds, going 

to the capital markets to borrow, I gather, $15 billion and having 

the corporation assume the debt and putting the proceeds in the 

pension fund. Would anybody care to comment on this strategy and 

whether other companies should be encouraged to follow? 

Mr. STEIN. It has been suggested that there are some accounting 

benefits, given the way the accounting treatment of pension funding works, that by putting the money in the plan and then assuming a higher rate of return, General Motors will actually be able 

to have some extra earnings added to its annual operating earnings. But frankly, I would rather see the money in the plan than 

not in the plan, so whatever its motives——

Senator FITZGERALD. Do you know what percentage funded they 

are now? 

Mr. STEIN. No. 

41

Senator FITZGERALD. OK. They had $15 billion that went a long 

way, I think, in any case. 

Mr. STEIN. Yes, but if their motives are impure, the effects are 

very good, so God bless them. 

Senator FITZGERALD. OK. [Laughter.] 

Well, thank you all very much. You all have been excellent witnesses and we appreciate your time and attention on a complex 

matter. Thank you for being here. We will keep the record open 

until the close of business tomorrow, if you would like to have any 

further statements put in the record or if Senators would like to 

have further statements put in the record. 

Thank you all very much. This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 5:01 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

(43)

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