WASHINGTON, D.C. — With coronavirus still spreading and Election Day getting closer, Congress seems more divided — and busier — than ever.

So I was surprised when Ohio’s two U.S. senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, took to the Senate floor within a week of each other this summer to beg for a bipartisan deal on pension reform.

“These are people who did everything right. They spent years working on assembly lines, bagging groceries, driving trucks, working hard to keep this economy going and to provide for their families,” Brown said in a floor speech on August 6.

Just days earlier, Portman delivered his own speech on July 29.

“Years of bad federal policy with respect to funding and withdrawal liability rules, losses on risky investments, and failure to take proactive action have led to this crisis, and the current economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus has made the situation even worse,” he said.

Multiemployer pension plans are formed when multiple employers — or businesses — team up with a labor union and combine their financial resources to create retirement benefits for their workers.

Nearly 11 million Americans are covered by 1,400 of these plans, but over 1.4 million (including 50,000 Ohioans) could see their benefits cut by 90-percent in the coming years if Congress doesn’t step in.

That’s because this pension plan system is in serious debt — over $600 billion. And the federal corporation that maintains it could go bankrupt in the next five years.

"This is a ticking time bomb for retirees, for their employers, for workers, and for the federal government,” said Richard Johnson, the director of the Program on Retirement Policy at the Urban Institute. “It’s something that if Congress could address today rather than later, the problem becomes less serious. The longer they wait, the more serious the problem becomes. But I’m not optimistic that they will be able to address it this year.”

In a virtual interview in August, Johnson told me that while the pandemic has highlighted the importance of people having financial security, the politics of how to get this pension program out of debt has paralyzed Congress for several years.

“What the Democrats want to do is have the costs of providing relief to the multiemployer plans, having those costs be paid by the federal government,” Johnson said. “And the Republicans want to have the costs spread among employers, retirees and workers, and the federal government.”

Back in 2018, Portman and Brown served on a select committee dedicated to solving this problem. But the group couldn’t reach a deal.

Since then, the Democratic-led House passed a pension reform bill named after the late Cincinnati-area Teamster Butch Lewis, but the Republican-led Senate hasn’t taken it up.

Then the House passed the $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill called the Heroes Act back in May. It included some different pension reform legislation, but the Senate hasn’t taken that up either.

Brown told me Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is to blame, and he thinks it will cost Republicans in November.

“So far, we’ve not succeeded with the Butch Lewis Act or other pension reforms because Mitch McConnell has blocked our ability to do that,” Brown said in a virtual interview in August. “McConnell’s going to be on his way out in the next few months. He’s starting to realize that. If he doesn’t come to the table, we’ll do it next year.”

Portman argues Democrats have had the wrong approach in wanting taxpayers to foot the bill in its entirety. But he said their latest proposal in the Heroes Act is a step in the right direction.

“That means we have a better shot, I believe, this year than we’ve had in a long time to try to solve this crisis and do it in a bipartisan way,” he said in his July floor speech.

Portman was not available for an interview for this story, but he responded in writing to two questions I sent his office:

1) Is pension reform coming up in any of the conversations you’re having regarding COVID relief? 

“Over the past six months, I’ve made clear that action to solve this pension crisis is needed now in my floor speeches and with my conversations with members on both sides of the aisle.  We had a bicameral and bipartisan solution very close at hand at the conclusion of a committee process that ended about a year and half ago, which both addressed the immediate crisis facing the PBGC in a balanced way, and made structural reforms to prevent recurrence of the problem. But we weren’t quite able to get there.  I continue to believe we have a better shot this year than we have in a long time to try and solve this crisis.  Whether we include a pension solution in a COVID package or pass it as a standalone bill, I just want to get it done.”

2) Sen. Brown blamed Leader McConnell for blocking the Senate’s ability to get pension reform done, including not taking up the Butch Lewis Act or the Heroes Act (which included pension reform). Do you agree that Senate Republicans have missed opportunities to complete pension reform?
 
“In order to solve this, both parties must work together to achieve consensus in both the House and Senate. The proposal passed by House Democrats only uses taxpayer money to bail out these plans – and there is no bipartisan support for it in the Senate.  Republicans have reached out to Democratic leaders in the House and Senate to try and discuss a shared responsibility approach that can gain consensus in both chambers.   We’re ready to find an acceptable compromise that works for both parties.”