House members appointed to multiemployer panel

House members serving on a new congressional committee dealing with struggling multiemployer pension funds were named Friday by House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.

The Joint Select Committee on the Solvency of Multiemployer Pension Plans, created as part of the recently enacted bipartisan budget act, calls for eight members from the House and eight from the Senate, split evenly between Republicans and Democrats.

Mr. Ryan named House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., Education and the Workforce Committee member Phil Roe, R-Tenn., and House Ways and Means Committee members Vern Buchanan, R-Fla. and David Schweikert, R-Ariz. to the panel.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., named Ways and Means Committee ranking member Richard Neal, D-Mass., Education and the Workforce Committee ranking member Bobby Scott, D-Va., and committee members Donald Norcross, D-N.J., and Debbie Dingell, D-Mich.

Mr. Neal is the lead House sponsor of bicameral legislation that would create a federal loan program for multiemployer pension funds and a new Treasury Department office called the Pension Rehabilitation Administration to oversee the loan program, to be funded by the sale of Treasury-issued bonds to financial institutions.

Messrs. Roe and Norcross are co-sponsors of legislation introduced Feb. 14 that would give multiemployer pension plan sponsors a hybrid option combining defined benefit and defined contribution features.

The Senate members have not been announced yet.

The select committee, charged with improving the solvency of multiemployer pension plans as well as the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., is required to hold public hearings and vote on legislative recommendations by Nov. 30. The select committee will be dissolved by Dec. 31.

"It is critical that we address the stability of multiemployer pension plans, and the overall solvency of the PBGC," Mr. Ryan said in a statement.