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May 20, 2009 at 08:00 PM
The last time the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. board met, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was over 12,000, and most U.S. companies were reporting strong profits.
Barbara Bovbjerg, a director at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, today testified before a Senate Aging Committee hearing on the PBGC that the PBGC’s 3-member board last met in February 2003.
Since then, analyses from organizations such as Milliman Inc., Seattle, and Towers Perrin Forster & Crosby Inc., Philadelphia, have suggested that funding levels at PBGC-insured defined benefit pension plans have deteriorated rapidly.
In addition, a GAO review of PBGC board records shows that the typical PBGC board meeting held since 2003 has lasted only about an hour, Bovbjerg reported.
Congress structured the PBGC board in a statute. The board includes only the secretaries of Labor, Commerce and Treasury, Bovbjerg says.
When the PBGC board meets, “very little time is spent on addressing strategic and operational issues,” Bovbjerg testified, according to a written version of her remarks.
