How, you ask, can there possibly be good news on multiemployer pensions?

The updated 2019 PBGC projections aren’t out yet but there’s no reason to believe the numbers are any better than last year’s “insolvency in 2025” multi-employer PBGC fund projections; likewise, the government’s form 5500 data, the source for publicly-available information on plan funded status, only has updated data for a handful of plans.

The House is getting closer to voting on the same bill that failed last year, the Butch Lewis Act, which promised to save multiemployer solutions through the gimmick of long-term, low-interest, and ultimately forgivable loans, having passed a replica of this bill through the House Education and Labor Committee in early June and through the Ways and Means Committee just last week.  There’s no bill at all in the Senate.

I get e-mails from workers or retirees who are counting on these pensions, or from concerned family members, and they see no sign of hope.

And so on.

But I recently had a conversation with Michael Scott, Executive Director of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Pensions (NCCMP), who surprised me with his optimism about the situation, because he believes that Congress is actually following their tradition of finding bipartisan solutions when it comes to pensions, and is working hard to come up with a legislative solution.

Read More: @Forbes