Compliance March 7, 2005

Bingaman: Exec. Comp Limits Should be Toughened

March 7, 2005 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - A Democratic US senator used a hearing on the Administration's pension reform proposal last week to urge that the proposal's executive compensation limit go even farther.
Reported by

Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico) suggested that all executive compensation should be capped – not just deferred compensation – when plans facing termination are prohibited from increasing benefits for rank-and-file workers, according to a news report on hrpolicy.org.

The Bush Administration proposal prohibits a company with a pension plan at risk of termination from from putting money into executives’ nonqualified deferred compensation plans. The proposal also bars companies with severely underfunded plans from expanding pension benefits for employees.

Expressing similar sentiments during an earlier meeting of the House Workforce Committee, Ranking Member Representative George Miller (D-California) stated, “I am amazed that the first thing companies do when they discover financial distress is fund their CEO’s retirement plans.”

More about the Administration’s pension proposals is  here .

«