The Bush administration's plans to use a corporate bond benchmark for calculating pension contributions has been neither "sufficiently developed or examined" and could endanger the survival of the private pension system, said Kenneth W. Porter, chief actuary at E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Wilmington, Del. In testimony prepared for today's joint House subcommittee hearing on the president's proposal, Mr. Porter said using a yield curve of corporate bonds to calculate contributions, lump-sum payouts and PBGC variable premiums would "lack the transparency and predictability of a conservative corporate bond blend, and also not be as well understood."
Mr. Porter represented a coalition of employer groups - the American Benefits Council, the Business Roundtable, the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets, the ERISA Industry Committee, Financial Executives International, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
