More than 61,000 Michigan pensions protected by Biden’s American Rescue Plan

The White House announced on June 21 that more than 61,000 Michigan residents have had their pension benefits protected under a provision of the American Rescue Plan Act signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021. In total, the Biden administration said, over one million pension recipients across the United States have been helped by the program.

“Whether it is Social Security, Medicare, or pensions, workers who earn a dignified retirement through decades of hard work and sacrifice should never see their benefits cut due to broken promises or policies that favor the wealthy over working families,” Biden said in a statement accompanying the announcement.

The Rescue Plan was part of a stimulus package to help the economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The law created the Special Financial Assistance Program, which provides funds to keep pension plans solvent. According to the White House, before the law was put in place, affected workers were facing an average cut of 37% to their pensions.

The assistance program is known as the Butch Lewis Act and was named for Vietnam veteran and Teamsters union member Butch Lewis, who advocated for pension protection. After Lewis’ death in 2015, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown named the legislation designed to secure pensions in his honor.  

The stand-alone bill for the Butch Lewis Act received support from Democratic members of Michigan’s congressional delegation. Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters were co-sponsors of a version of the bill introduced in 2019, and Rep. Elissa Slotkin sponsored the House version.

That bill did not pass, but it was later included in the Rescue Plan. All three legislators, along with the rest of the Democrats in the delegation, backed the Rescue Plan. Michigan’s seven Republican congressional representatives voted against the stimulus package. The legislation only received support from Democratic votes in both houses of Congress.

Former President Donald Trump opposed the Rescue Plan. In January 2018, Trump White House budget director Mick Mulvaney characterized providing assistance to pension funds as a bailout.

Trump has signaled his support for cuts to federal retirement benefits such as Social Security and Medicare.

“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements,” Trump told CNBC in a March 11 interview.

That same day, Biden criticized Republican proposals to cut benefit programs.

“If anyone tries to cut Social Security or Medicare or raise the retirement age again, I will stop them,” he said.