According to a survey of 408 large companies by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 10percentt said they had scrapped subsidized benefits for future retirees in the past year, and 20percentt plan to do so within three years.
The PBGC was created in 1974 as a backstop for pension plans, but Congress has resisted extending taxpayer money to subsidize benefits up to this point.
A memorandum circulated by Mr. Boehner's office described 59 weeks of benefits as similar to the amount provided in past recessions and economic downturns, and said, "American taxpayers cannot subsidize benefits for an unprecedented, unending period of time".
But as it stands now, the beneficiaries in traditional Medicare are paying higher premiums to subsidize benefits for the minority in private plans, and the taxpayers are chipping in to boot.
The letter said that when the current collective bargaining agreement expires on June 30 the city would finance those pensions only at the same level as city employees, and that the city would no longer subsidize benefits like matching the 401(k) contributions of employees.
In other ways, undocumented immigrants -- who are generally excluded from government benefits -- subsidize benefits for U.S. citizens.
"The Metropolitan Water District is basically subsidizing benefits for the entire state of California over and above the 19 million customers that Met has in Southern California.
Bunning has obstructed a bipartisan effort to move legislation that would provide a 30-day stopgap extension of enhanced unemployment benefits and subsidized COBRA benefits for laid-off workers, provisions of last year's stimulus bill that expired on Feb. 28.
New York commissioners charge that it amounts to yet another deeply subsidized project benefiting an operation based in New Jersey.
The law explicitly prohibits the government from interfering in negotiations between manufacturers and the private entities that will provide subsidized drug benefits to the elderly.
