The Pension Rights Center agrees that many multiemployer pension plans are in financial distress right now, and that reforms are needed, but it told a House committee this week that it doesn't agree with the idea of cutting existing benefits to retirees.

It told lawmakers considered legislation to address the issue that a recent report by the National Coordinating Committee on Multiemployer Plans includes some good ideas for how to reform the future of multiemployer plans. Those ideas include the concept of alliances, clarifying Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. authority to facilitate mergers, and innovative pension plan designs.

But, the Pension Rights Center said, it is "deeply troubled by the document's suggestions for deeply troubled plans, which endorse the unprecedented and dangerous step of empowering plan trustees in ongoing and still solvent plans to slash benefits of men and women who are already in retirement and who have no opportunity to replace lost benefits."