You can be forgiven if you’ve forgotten about the Dephi pension scandal of which the Romney campaign tried to make an issue in the presidential campaign, last year. There are too many scandals for even conservative bloggers to keep up with, and the Regime knows that if they stonewall long enough, they’ll run out the clock. What difference does it make at this point? The targeting of Delphi pensions happened way back in 2009 while the Obama administration was implementing its auto bailout plan, and focusing on it now after all these years is just another attempt to drum up a “phony scandal,” right?
The White House and Treasury Department have always maintained that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) independently made the decision to terminate the 20,000 non-union Delphi workers’ pension plans.
But emails obtained by the Daily Caller almost a year ago showed that the Obama Administration played a
role. In fact, “the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Timothy Geithner, was the driving force behind terminating the pensions of 20,000 salaried retirees at the Delphi auto parts manufacturing company.”
According to the National Legal and Policy Center, “the evidence suggests that Treasury
officials lied when they testified, under oath, that the Administration
had nothing to do with the Delphi pension decisions that favored
political allies.”
The Oversight Committee has been unsuccessfully trying to get the documents relating to the Delphi pension scandal from Treasury since September of 2012. The latest attempt to try and find out why non-union retirees interests were subordinated to union allies of the Administration came in the form of a letter to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew from Oversight leaders last week as reported by the committee’s website which stated:
“Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Subcommittee Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.) and senior Committee member Mike Turner (R-Ohio) sent letters to Secretary Lew and Josh Gotbaum, Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, seeking documents related to the preferential treatment Delphi’s unionized employees received during the taxpayer-funded bailout of General Motors in 2008 (should read “2009”).
‘Now is the time for the Treasury Department and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to stop stonewalling the Committee’s legitimate requests,’ said Chairman John Mica, R-Fla. ‘We will take whatever steps necessary to uncover all the facts and to expose how the TARP union bailout transpired.’
‘For far too long this Administration has refused to provide the documents and answers that the Delphi Salaried Retirees deserve,’ said Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio. ‘They have willfully refused to comply with the oversight process, and in turn have spurned their commitment to the American people to be the ‘most transparent Administration’ in history. We will no longer accept excuses or delays. If the Administration once again ignores and evades the oversight process, compelling responses will be the only option left to ensure their compliance.'”
The Delphi retiree incident is one of the more egregious abuses of the Obama-orchestrated GM bankruptcy process. During the process, less politically-favored groups like the non-union Delphi retirees and GM bondholders saw their rights subordinated to union members who in turn repaid the favor by helping with President Obama’s reelection bid. The Delphi retirees continue to try and get their story heard since filing a lawsuit in 2009 to little media attention.
Imagine if the administration that had done something like this were a Republican one, though. There would be “a lot of somber sociology in the media about the Republican War on women Seniors.”
Pretty funny, huh?
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