Funding Pensions...

Greg Mankiw praises Bob Reich, who praises the Bush administration's efforts to get Congress to stop giving companies permission to underfund their pension accounts:

Greg Mankiw's Blog: Reich on POTUS and the PBGC: Pigs fly! Hell freezes over! Actually, not, but an even more remarkable event did occur: Robert Reich found something nice to say about George Bush. He begins as follows:

The President's approval ratings are so low I thought I'd find something to compliment him on.... here it is. Congress is debating what to do about corporate pension plans. The President wants a law that forces companies to fully fund their pension obligations to their employees. He's right.

Corporate pension plans don't have nearly enough money to pay what the companies have promised their workers... a shortfall of over $450 billion. And if companies can't pay up, you know who's left holding the bag?... [T]here's a government agency called the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation that's supposed to insure most of these promises. But the PBGC itself is already deep in the red, to the tune of almost $30 billion...