400,000 Americans In Jeopardy As Giant Pension Fund Plans 50% Benefit Cuts

"A controversial 2014 law allowed the pension to propose [deep] cuts, many of them by half or more, as a way to perhaps save the fund," The Kansas City Star wrote earlier this week adding that "two much smaller pensions also have sought similar relief under the law, and still more pensions are significantly underfunded."

"What's happening to us is a microcosm of what's going to happen to the rest of the pensions in the United States," said Jay Perry, a longtime Teamsters member.''

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"At the end of last year GM's U.S. hourly pension plan was underfunded by $10.4 billion," The New York Times writes. "About $61 billion of the obligations were funded for the plan's roughly 360,000 pensioners." Maybe it's time for tax payers to bail themselves out.

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The fund is projected to go broke by 2026. Without the proposed cuts, no benefits at all will be paid from that point forward.

According to letters shared with The Star, cuts range from around 40% to 61%. "[The] average pension loss was more than $1,400 a month," the paper says.