Robert Reich says that George Bush is doing the right thing by demanding laws that would require companies to “fully fund their pension obligations to employees,” something that corporations have opposed. Call me cranky, but I have a hard time believing that Bush would ever stand up to corporations to do something that would benefit workers and future retirees, so I’d like to see the fine print here. Surely there’s a catch, no?
For background on the pension crisis in the United States, Roger Lowenstein wrote a terrific piece for the New York Times Magazine last year describing how companies have managed to skirt accounting rules and underfund their pension obligations, which means that unless something changes, a lot of companies are going to have to welch on pension promises made decades ago.
