Dec. 20, 2019

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

Pension Crisis: Grassley, Alexander seek to tackle forecasted union pension collapse
Our nation’s pension systems are in trouble. Underfunded with outsized promises to beneficiaries who are living longer, the death rattles of the defined benefit pension system, which promises a fixed amount of money per month for retirees, are now audible. The pension promise made to private sector union, multi-employer pension plan retirees, who through some fault of their own, find themselves facing potential massive cuts in their pension payments due not only to the same demographic factors challenging all defined benefit plans, but also due in part to the decision made by lawmakers of both political parties to outsource union heavy industries like steel oversees. With fewer and fewer domestic steelmakers, those steelworker union members found themselves with pension promises and no one paying the premiums. The Society of Human Resources Managers reports that 114 multi-employer pension plans impacting 1.3 million workers are projected to fail within the next 20 years. Of these, one dwarfs the rest, the Teamsters Central States pension fund which a whopping $18 billion in unfunded liabilities affecting almost 400,000 people is projected to go bust in the next couple of years. And since every year of delay in meeting this pension time bomb means exponentially higher costs downstream, Congress feels some urgency to meet the private sector pension problem now rather than to make it much more expensive downstream.

Cartoon: Family Tradition
Environmental radical climate activists sing the same old tune.

Video: Forget impeachment, the only reason we have military aid to Ukraine is b/c of Russia witch hunt
The whole case for impeachment comes down to Democrats complaining about President Trump’s decision to briefly pause military assistance to Ukraine pending State and Defense Department reviews, which were completed and the aid was released on Sept. 11. But the only reason Congress ever adopted the assistance to Ukraine in the first place was because of the false allegations against President Trump stemming from the Russia witch hunt, including that the Republican Party platform provision on Ukraine military aid was changed by Moscow. It never was, and yet became the rationale for getting involved there.

USMCA passage major win for President Trump and America
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning: “House passage of the USMCA is major win for President Donald Trump and America. After decades of political promises to end or fix NAFTA, President Trump delivered. The USMCA reestablishes U.S. sovereignty by forcing dispute resolution into U.S. courts, protects intellectual property, and sets groundbreaking anti-currency manipulation rules that will set the standard for future trade agreements. The fact that Speaker Pelosi was forced to give President Trump this landmark victory in the immediate wake of impeachment demonstrates that the President has emerged politically stronger than ever.”

Piers Morgan: It’s a Merry Impeachmas alright – but for President Trump, not the deluded Democrats, dumb liberal celebrities and shockingly-biased media who don’t understand that this will get him re-elected
“The bottom line is that for many Americans, this is a hard-to-understand scandal involving something that didn’t happen involving a leader they’ve never heard of in a country they know little about. That’s why the latest polls show plunging support for impeachment. That’s why the Democrats don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of it succeeding. That’s why Nancy Pelosi will need to keep that black dress and mournful face for next November. And that’s why Trump’s laughing all the way to re-election. As he’ll be saying to himself today: Merry Impeachmas!”

Pension Crisis: Grassley, Alexander seek to tackle forecast union pension collapse

By Rick Manning

Our nation’s pension systems are in trouble. Underfunded with outsized promises to beneficiaries who are living longer, the death rattles of the defined benefit pension system, which promises a fixed amount of money per month for retirees, are now audible.

There are many facets of this problem and I will focus upon the four distinct groups of defined benefit plan beneficiaries. Note those who have their retirement funds in 401(k) accounts are not included in this discussion because the pension payments for those are dependent upon the amount in the actual accounts rather than on promises based upon fantasy future projections.

The first, and most obvious, is the Social Security recipient. Social Security is a defined benefit promise to people who paid into the program and were promised an annuity-like payment depending upon the amount paid in, and the number of years worked. Social Security faces two major problems which lead to projections of insolvency in 2035. The first is the retirement of the huge baby boomer generation who are at the midway point in entering the system, creating a massive drain on resources. The second is that someone who is eligible for Social Security at age 62 this year is projected to live to 84 years of age on average. This means that if that person entered the workforce at the age of 18 years old, they will have worked for 44 years, and would be likely to collect Social Security for 22 years. This is far longer than was anticipated when the monthly payment amounts were promised.

The second is the private sector, non-union employee who was promised a pension after reaching some combination of age and years worked. Payments from these pension plans are “safeguarded at 55% of payments” by the federal government’s Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). These pensions suffer from the same challenges as Social Security with an additional layer of potential underfunding by the employer along with employer bankruptcies which end money flowing into the pension while leaving all the liabilities. While most pension funds are not in bad shape, enough are projected to be in trouble that the PBGC consistently warns Congress that they face catastrophic shortfalls should a wave of corporate failures occur.

The third group are public employees who typically have a pension fund and promised returns that are politically driven with the expectation that taxpayers will continue to be compelled to pay higher and higher taxes due to the political influence of public employee unions. This system is on the brink of failure in many states like Illinois, and another column will be devoted exclusively to this public policy problem.

The fourth grouping, which is the primary subject of this column is the pension promise made to private sector union, multi-employer pension plan (MEPP) retirees, who through some fault of their own, find themselves facing potential massive cuts in their pension payments due not only to the same demographic factors challenging all defined benefit plans, but also due in part to the decision made by lawmakers of both political parties to outsource union heavy industries like steel oversees. With fewer and fewer domestic steelmakers, those steelworker union members found themselves with pension promises and no one paying the premiums.

In other circumstances, over a long period of time, the contract negotiations between the unions and the companies focused upon wages and health care, while giving short shrift to the future pension needs. Union negotiators knew that pensions were tied to wages, so they were pushing pension costs higher through every wage increase, but failed to negotiate for additional funds to be paid into the pension plan. What’s more, in many cases, the amount of employee contributions into the pension was negligible, and now the chickens are coming home to roost.

The Society of Human Resources Managers reports that 114 multi-employer pension plans impacting 1.3 million workers are projected to fail within the next 20 years. Of these, one dwarfs the rest, the Teamsters Central States pension fund which a whopping $18 billion in unfunded liabilities affecting almost 400,000 people is projected to go bust in the next couple of years.

And since every year of delay in meeting this pension time bomb means exponentially higher costs downstream, Congress feels some urgency to meet the private sector pension problem now rather than to make it much more expensive downstream.

Toward that end, Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) have draft legislation which seeks to undergird the pension system now to protect taxpayers from being saddled with a massive bailout in the future. The Multiemployer Pension Recapitalization and Reform Plan includes ﬁve major components:

1. Stabilize plans in immediate danger of failure;

2. Secure workers’ and retiree’s beneﬁts;

3. Strengthen the PBGC’s ability to backstop the multiemployer system;

4. Put the multiemployer system on a stable path for the long-term; and

5. Ensure ﬁscal responsibility.

In essence, these five areas entail increased corporate contributions into both the troubled pension plans and the PBGC, potential union employee payment requirements, an infusion of cash from the government into the system to keep it solvent in the short term while the structural reforms take effect and increases in the MEPP beneficiaries PBGC payment backstop along with some structural changes to MEPP management.

Other reforms which should be considered by the sponsors are an inclusion of provisions compelling the unions themselves to contribute to the pension fund solvency should they fall into an at risk status, require that funds only invest in companies which are transparent with the objective of protecting and growing assets under management, along with judging retirement fund investments solely on fiduciarily sound principles avoiding all social and environmental justice investments which don’t meet basic established standards. Finally, a requirement should be included that unions with troubled pensions convert younger workers to 401(k) style pension plans with employer contributions from the current reliance on defined benefit plans.

The importance of Senator Grassley and Alexander’s attempt to reform the current multi-employer system while it is relatively inexpensive is borne out in the latest Congressional spending spree where they gave a $6 billion taxpayer bailout of a number of United Mine Worker pension funds without any structural reform requirements or a plan to shore up the PBGC system as a whole.

The need to incorporate transparency investment criteria, stop-gap funding for the PBGC system, and requirements which ween younger union members off of the guaranteed to fail defined benefit system now would alleviate the long-term liability problems of today while providing retirement security for private sector union members in the future.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

Cartoon: Family Tradition

By A.F. Branco

Click here for a higher level resolution version.

Video: Forget impeachment, the only reason we have military aid to Ukraine is b/c of Russia witch hunt

To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz9XwuD30YM

USMCA passage major win for President Trump and America

Dec. 19, 2019, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement in response to House passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement:

"House passage of the USMCA is major win for President Donald Trump and America. After decades of political promises to end or fix NAFTA, President Trump delivered. The USMCA reestablishes U.S. sovereignty by forcing dispute resolution into U.S. courts, protects intellectual property, and sets groundbreaking anti-currency manipulation rules that will set the standard for future trade agreements. The fact that Speaker Pelosi was forced to give President Trump this landmark victory in the immediate wake of impeachment demonstrates that the President has emerged politically stronger than ever."

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2019/12/usmca-passage-major-win-for-president-trump-and-america/

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from the Daily Mail, Piers Morgan makes the case for why Democrats’ impeachment of President Donald Trump will help him get reelected:

By Piers Morgan

‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them,’ said the late, great Maya Angelou.

The Washington Post’s Congress reporter and CNN political analyst Rachael Bade certainly showed us who she was with her social media post celebrating President Trump’s impeachment yesterday.

‘Merry Impeachmas from the WAPO team!’ she exclaimed excitedly, alongside a beaming photo of herself partying in a Washington restaurant with a group of co-workers, most of whom are also CNN analysts.

After an immediate deluge of criticism for this startlingly partisan tweet, Bade deleted her tweet and explained it was ‘being misinterpreted by some as an endorsement of some kind..’

No sh*t, Sherlock.

Of course, all it did was confirm what has been self-evident since the day Trump won the 2016 Election: most of America’s mainstream hates him and is absolutely thrilled to see him impeached.

So, of course, are the Democrats, which was obvious when they exploded into raucous cheering in the House of Representatives as their leader Nancy Pelosi solemnly announced Trump’s fate - before she frantically silenced them like a crazed kindergarten teacher.

Pelosi herself was dressed in funereal black and bore a face of unrelenting gravity – with a slash of blood-red lipstick.

As she keeps reminding us, this impeachment brings her no pleasure whatsoever, and she is praying regularly for Donald at this difficult time.

Oh pur-lease…. spare me this pious, disingenuous nonsense.

Romping home in 2020: What will surely come to pass is that after being cleared by a Senate trial in 2020, Trump will be cleared of wrongdoing and will instantly go on one of the planet’s longest and most tormenting victory laps. (President Trump is pictured at his Michigan rally last night)

The truth is that she and her party have been plotting this since Trump set foot in the White House.

They couldn’t beat him at the ballot box in 2016 and fear they won’t be able to beat him at the ballot box in 2020.

So, they’ve concluded impeachment may be their only route to stop him.

Yet as I have repeatedly said, it is an act of extraordinary stupidity and self-harm.

And never was this more apparent than in the moment of its happening.

Yesterday was one of the most pointless, farcical days in the history of America’s Congress.

For hour after tortuous hour, the representatives of the world’s greatest superpower filed up to have their moment in the sun.

Or rather, in the glare of TV cameras.

They raged, they sighed, they rolled their eyes, they wiped away fake tears, they invoked every great American historical figure they could think of, they told their personal stories of family courage… and so they banged on, sucking the very life out of the holiday season with every indignant self-aggrandizing breath.

But what did any of it achieve?

The Democrats were always going to win this impeachment vote because they control the House.

All their members ranted against Trump and the Republicans - and all the Republicans ranted in support of him and against the Democrats.

Unlike Bill Clinton’s impeachment, there was no deviation from party ranks.

This was a 100% partisan pleasure-dome, though the only people deriving any actual pleasure from the unedifying spectacle were the politicians lapping up TV exposure to tens of millions of Americans like ravenous parched camels arriving at an oasis after weeks of traipsing across the Sahara Desert.

Meanwhile, their supposed victim was at a rally chuckling to his base: ‘This doesn’t feel like an impeachment to me, does it to you?’

No, frankly.

It feels like a pathetic joke at America’s expense.

A pantomime, in fact.

In Britain right now, it’s peak pantomime season.

Pantos are musical comedy theater shows featuring good guys, bad guys, cross-dressing dames, risqué jokes, and lots of jovial warning chants from the audience of ‘BEHIND YOU!’

They’re ridiculous laughable affairs, yet not quite as ridiculous or laughable as this impeachment process.

Let’s be absolutely clear: Trump’s not going to be convicted.

He’s going to be comfortably acquitted in any trial by a Republican-dominated Senate.

It would take 20 Republicans to flip to find him guilty, and there’s more chance of me being elected Pope than that happening.

And that’s assuming the impeachment even reaches the Senate.

Ms Pelosi has hinted she may not actually both sending it over…so foregone is the conclusion.

This is therefore a staggeringly futile exercise of unprecedented proportions.

Yet that hasn’t stopped all the usual half-witted bunch of obsessive Trump-loathing celebrities exploding with false dawn ecstasy as they proclaim it as the end of their nemesis.

From Bette Midler and Cher to John Legend and Amber Tamblyn, they raced to spew their glee all over Twitter.

To which my response is this: what are you clueless clowns all celebrating?

Are you just too dumb to see what’s actually happening here?

Do you not understand it all ends in a big loss for Trump-haters and a big win for Trump?

This impeachment only plays out one way: if it goes to full Senate trial then sometime in early 2020, Trump will be cleared of wrongdoing and will instantly go on one of the planet’s longest and most tormenting victory laps.

As with the ill-fated Mueller Report into supposed Russia collusion that never happened, Trump will simply proclaim it as another fake news witch hunt.

His base will fire up even more than they already are, the Democrat base will fire down in abject dismay, and all the momentum for the 2020 Election will swing behind the President.

If the US economy continues to roar in the way it’s currently doing, with stock markets hitting record highs and unemployment numbers hitting record lows, then Trump will storm towards another win next November like an unstoppable King Kong.

Impeachment was intended by the Founding Fathers to be the ultimate check and balance on a president gone rogue.

I keep hearing this is the ‘worst’ impeachment in American history, because Trump’s behavior over the Ukraine affair is so overtly terrible.

But it’s really not.

His supposed ‘quid pro quo’ phone call to Ukraine’s new president was reckless and stupid, and he deserves to be criticized for it.

But it wasn’t a ‘high crime’.

Not least because the ‘crime’ – Trump withholding US military aid until Ukraine launched an investigation into alleged corruption involving the Bidens - never actually occurred.

There was no investigation launched, and the aid was soon handed over.

The bottom line is that for many Americans, this is a hard-to-understand scandal involving something that didn’t happen involving a leader they’ve never heard of in a country they know little about.

That’s why the latest polls show plunging support for impeachment.

That’s why the Democrats don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of it succeeding.

That’s why Nancy Pelosi will need to keep that black dress and mournful face for next November.

And that’s why Trump’s laughing all the way to re-election.

As he’ll be saying to himself today: Merry Impeachmas!

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