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Truth comes out about pensions

DEAR EDITOR:

Finally, the truth has begun to be told regarding how the Obama Administration caused thousands of salaried retirees to lose the earned pension and health care insurance benefits that took a lifetime to earn, while still providing those same benefits to those with more influence.

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) has detailed how the President’s Auto Task Force used a heavy hand to force GM, Delphi and the PBGC to follow its own politically oriented agenda.

To be clear: It was the U.S. Treasury (specifically Ron Bloom, a member of the President’s Auto Task Force) that negotiated the pension deal for the major unions, not GM and not some investment company.

We expect our government to act like our government in all circumstances. In this case, the administration chose to take off the “mantle of government” and turn themselves into a commercial enterprise in order to justify the unfair treatment of various groups of citizens.

The Treasury has objected to this characterization of their actions and has said they saved more than a million jobs. That is debatable but regardless, there is no doubt that the losses the Delphi retirees have had to endure caused the loss of an additional 50,000 jobs across the country.

The members of the President’s Auto Task Force refused to cooperate with the SIGTARP investigation for more than a year until the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee brought its own leverage to bear.

The Treasury has refused to provide records of their involvement to numerous congressmen, senators and several legislative committees.

The Obama Administration has worked diligently to keep secret their own actions and influence, so now that same oversight committee has had to issue a subpoena for those records. So much for transparency from this administration.

It is unfortunately too common to believe that our government is corrupt. Actions like keeping records secret and even threatening to use executive privilege to keep them secret (over a pension issue), purposely treating groups of citizens differently and justifying it on their perceived “leverage” and using our tax dollars to benefit only political supporters help to strengthen that belief. All President Obama’s administration has to do to put this issue to rest is to provide the records to the court and the committee that has demanded them.

As a Delphi salaried retiree, I’m glad to see a little transparency bring out some of the truth of what happened. Unfortunately, the Treasury doesn’t like it at all.

We will continue to fight for what we earned, just like the unions did. Fighting against a closed, corrupt, selfish and disconnected administration has made it much more difficult, but that just means it will take a little longer. All we ask for is what we earned. It would be good if the administration actually did stand up for the little guy.

Bruce Gump

Delphi Salaried

Retirees Association

Warren

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