Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) says that if Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama can help slash the pensions of non-union Delphi workers, they can cut benefits for others as well.
In 2009, as part of the Obama-Biden administration’s taxpayer-funded bailout of General Motors (GM), the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) terminated the pension plans of about 20,0000 non-unionized Delphi workers. In some cases, workers had their pensions gutted by as much as 75 percent.
A federal report in 2013 detailed that the Delphi workers would likely have their pensions cut by an estimated $440 million. Meanwhile, GM topped off unionized Delphi workers’ pensions at a cost of about $1 billion.
This week, Trump signed a memorandum that orders federal agencies to devise a plan on how to restore the Delphi workers’ slashed pensions over the next 90 days.
Turner, who has been fighting for over a decade on behalf of the Delphi workers, suggested to SiriusXM Patriot Breitbart News Saturday that Biden cannot be trusted not to pick winners and losers as the Obama-Biden administration did in 2009.
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“These people earned these pensions,” Turner said. “They gave to General Motors, they were part of General Motors’ overall success and … General Motors, through bad management, ended up in bankruptcy in the 2008 financial crisis. And to pick these individuals … [with] health concerns, families that have had to lend them money, people who lost their homes, all because they didn’t get the pensions that they were entitled to and that they earned.”
“This was their choice,” Turner continued. “It wasn’t just that there was a Delphi salaried retirees pension problem. There was a General Motors and Delphi problem that the Obama-Biden administration made … they didn’t have to do this; they chose to do it. This pension had been funded, these people earned these pensions, and they chose to pick winners and losers and they picked them.”
While Biden has claimed he would consider reviewing the issue, Delphi retirees have said he had seven years to speak on their behalf as vice president and chose to not act.
Trump, in contrast to Biden, has been consistent in his wanting to restore the Delphi pensions when he first learned of the issue, Turner said.
“Donald Trump deserves great credit here because he heard the stories of the injustice, he heard what had occurred to these people, and he stepped in to right this wrong,” Turner said. “Dr. Peter Navarro has been such a leader in this topic, really diving in to what happened — what happened at the administration at the PBGC and the Obama-Biden administration. [Navarro] made a presentation to the president and a recommendation for him to intervene.”
“What’s interesting to watch … Joe Biden, when this happened, he fully supported the Obama administration’s efforts to take General Motors through this bankruptcy process in which [the Delphi non-union workers] were picked to be the losers,” Turner continued.
“[Biden], on camera, specifically said that there was ‘nothing we could do’ and just recently he’s campaigning in Youngstown and he says ‘If I’m president, I’ll fix this,'” Turner said. “He went from ‘there’s nothing you can do’ to if he’s president he can fix this. Luckily we have a president who stepped in to fix this.”
In 2012, federal documents unveiled how the Obama-Biden administration’s Treasury Department worked to gut the pensions of the Delphi workers. In other emails, PBGC officials indicated they had the green light from the Obama-Biden administration to slash the pensions.
Those involved with the pension-slashing scheme, such as Tim Geithner, Steven Rattner, and Ron Bloom, are currently pouring thousands of dollars into Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign.
Delphi, which has since split into Aptiv and Delphi Technologies, announced in 2006 that it would shutter 21 of its 29 plants in the United States — offshoring some 20,000 U.S. jobs to Mexico, China, and other foreign countries.
At the time, Delphi employed nearly 50,000 Americans, who earned about $30 an hour on the assembly line. Now, workers in Mexico for the company earn about $1 an hour.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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