Not only did he take our retirement money and use it to pay off his union backers, but he also probably helped his union cronies avoid prosecution, because, had those pension funds run out of money as they would have without this semi-secret taxpayer bailout, there would certainly have been some legal attention devoted to the question, WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?
But now the money is in the accounts where it was supposed to be all along so thanks to Joe Biden -- by which I mean, thanks to the US taxpayer, who was never consulted about any of this -- none of Joe Biden's union cronies have to worry about any forensic accounting investigations or prosecutions.
They'll just take your retirement funds to "shore up" the unions' retirement funds.
Isn't that the right thing to do? Aren't we all in this together?
This has been the plan all along. This has been the plan for the past 30 years, when the unions realized they had spent all the money they were supposed to put into the pension funds on present benefits (and illegal payouts to the union officials).
And now the plan goes into effect.
Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist:
"The largest private pension bailout in American history" gave each beneficiary of the Central States Pension Fund nearly $100,000.
Can Americans be bribed with their own money? The powers that be are certainly putting that question to the test. In recent years, we've seen inflation-inducing cash giveaways associated with "Covid relief." We've seen the ongoing attempts at profoundly inequitable student loan forgiveness. In December, we saw a $1.7 trillion pork pie omnibus appropriations bill passed by a Congress that had no time to read it.
Lost in all of this has been one spectacular giveaway: $100,000 per beneficiary of the Central States Pension Fund (CSPF). The fund provides pension benefits to nearly 360,000 private-sector workers and retirees, mostly Teamsters Union members. U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, called the deal out in December, noting it was "the largest private pension bailout in American history" that benefited only "a tiny minority of workers." He suggested it resulted from the insanity of "allowing those who mismanaged pensions to determine whether their funds qualify for taxpayer assistance with no safeguards."
The $36 billion comes almost two years after the passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. That "rescue" was the Biden administration's Covid spending bonanza. Biden signed it into law in the spring of 2021, when the economy was already well into recovery. The housing market was booming. The stock market was on a steady upward climb. It was obvious that the "rescue" would cause inflation. It was obvious Democrats were taking advantage of an opportunity to give away public largesse. And did they ever.
Lest we doubt the ongoing influence of the Teamsters in American politics, the recent $36 billion giveaway says it all. It says to the union bosses, who make up half of the CSPF board: "You can watch the pension fund's health decline for decades. You can make unrealistic promises to employees. You can keep the plan below 75 percent funded. You can depend on a pyramid concept where imaginary new members keep coming in to pay for retired members. None of that matters now. The politicians you own will bail you out with the public's money. In fact, you can take such largesse that union workers in other multi-employer plans get left with only crumbs. Write yourself a check. And, as a bonus, we won't ask you to change anything."
Workers of the world are not united here. This is a cash grab benefiting one group of roughly 360,000 (3 percent) of the 11 million participants in the multi-employer plans.
And Covid, schmovid. Even before the panic and the lockdowns, the Congressional Research Service reported that the multi-employer pensions were underfunded by $650 billion. In 2018, CSPF had been projected to reach insolvency by 2025.
Just wait until the public sector unions pension funds start failing!
Chicago's public sector unions' pension funds have barely any money in them! Neither do Detroit's!
And they have promised to pay out billions and billions!
Guess who's going to be funding those?!
No, Guess!
You're gonna love the answer!