“The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is a government-owned corporation responsible for insuring the benefits of 41 million people who participate in defined benefit pension plans provided by private employers. About 10 million of those participants are covered by plans offered by groups of employers; such plans are insured by PBGC’s multiemployer program. That program has drawn increased scrutiny from policymakers in recent years because of the high likelihood that it will not be able to meet all of its insurance obligations, potentially causing participants to lose insured benefits or putting pressure on the government to provide PBGC with greater federal resources. CBO has projected the claims on PBGC’s multiemployer program—which are likely to be relatively small in the coming decade but are projected to be much larger in the following decade—and has analyzed options for improving the program’s finances. Why Will PBGC Probably Be Unable to Meet All of Its Future Insurance Obligations? Many multiemployer pension plans have large funding shortfalls. In all, multiemployer defined benefit plans have promised nearly $850 billion worth of benefits to their participants but have assets worth only $400 billion. Most plans with shortfalls hope to make up their funding gaps by earning investment returns on their assets that outstrip the growth of their liabilities and by getting larger contributions from participating employers. However, a small but growing number of multiemployer plans—which together have $100 billion in liabilities but only $40 billion in assets for about 1 million participants—have reported that they will probably not be able to make up their shortfalls. If so, those plans will eventually become insolvent (lack enough liquid assets to pay immediate obligations) and will file claims for financial assistance from PBGC. Those claims are likely to exceed the resources that PBGC will have available to pay them…”