The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee voted 12-11 along party-line to advance the nomination of Janet Dhillon to be the next Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. During the executive session, HELP Chair Bill Cassidy (R-LA) highlighted what he called the “egregious case” of the PBGC overpaying the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund’s Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program award “by $127 million after the fund included 3,479 dead participants in their bailout request.”
The brief 30-minute executive session on Dhillon’s nomination made clear that Republicans who were opposed to the creation of the PBGC Special Financial Assistance (SFA) program and refer to it as a “union bailout” will be pressuring Dhillon to undertake major reforms to the regulations implementing the $90 billion program to aid the most underfunded multiemployer programs. Democrats, led by HELP Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) criticized Dhillon for her prior work on bankruptcies at U.S. Airways, Dollar Tree, and other companies that resulted in pension plans being taken over by the PBGC’s insurance program. Democrats also noted that Dhillon had refused to say whether she will comply with the Special Financial Assistance law “or whether she will attempt to undermine it.”