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The 2015 Pension 40: W. Thomas Reeder Jr.
No. 35 W. Thomas Reeder Jr., Director / Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.


As the newly confirmed director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., W. Thomas Reeder Jr. is expected to strike a less strident tone than his predecessor Joshua Gotbaum (No. 15). Reeder, age 65, is a University of Texas School of Law graduate who has made a long trek through government. He was the benefits tax counsel in the office of tax policy in President George W. Bush’s Treasury Department, then moved to a staff job on the Senate Finance Committee and to the Internal Revenue Service under President Obama. Reeder’s ability to work both sides of the aisle helped him gain approval from a bitterly divided Congress. With the Obama administration heading into its final year, Reeder has several important jobs. First, he needs to shepherd implementation of the Kline-Miller Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014. Criticism of the legislation, however, has focused on the sorry state of the PBGC’s own balance sheet — and this leads to job No. 2. In its November 2015 annual report, released a month after Reeder’s confirmation, the PBGC reported an increase in the deficit of its single-employer program to $24.1 billion from $19.3 billion; for multiemployer plans the shortfall rose to $52.3 billion from $42.4 billion. The size of the multiemployer gap caused Moody’s Investors Service to issue a note warning, “Despite current and potential future premium increases, there will come an inflection point where plan sponsors will not be able to afford premiums and the PBGC will run out of money.” The PBGC, Moody’s said, “estimates there is a greater than 50 percent chance it will be insolvent by 2025. It further extrapolates a 90 percent chance of insolvency by 2031. In 2016, Reeder must present these uncomfortable facts to Congress and ask for an increase in PBGC premiums.
![]() 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation ![]() 3. Chris Christie New Jersey ![]() 4. Randi Weingarten AmericanFederation of Teachers ![]() 5. Phyllis Borzi U.S. Department of Labor |
![]() 6. Kevin de León California ![]() 7. Alejandro García Padilla Commonwealth ofPuerto Rico ![]() 8. Laurence Fink BlackRock ![]() 9. Rahm Emanuel Chicago ![]() 10. Sean McGarvey North AmericanBuilding Trades Unions |
![]() 11. John Kline Minnesota ![]() 12. J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department ![]() 13. Damon Silvers AFL-CIO ![]() 14. Jeffrey Immelt General Electric Co. ![]() 15. Joshua Gotbaum Brookings Institution |
![]() 16. Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. ![]() 17. Mark Mullet Washington ![]() 18. Terry O'Sullivan Laborers' International Union of North America ![]() 19. Raymond Dalio Bridgewater Associates ![]() 20. Ted Wheeler Oregon |
![]() 21. Thomas Nyhan Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund ![]() 22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman Pensions Rights Center ![]() 23. Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee forMultiemployer Plans ![]() 24. Robert O'Keef Motorola Solutions ![]() 25. Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley |
![]() 26. Kenneth Feinberg The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg ![]() 27. Orrin Hatch Utah ![]() 28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University ![]() 29. Ian Lanoff Groom Law Group ![]() 30. Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business |
![]() 31. Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees' Retirement System ![]() 32. Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services ![]() 33. Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research ![]() 34. Denise Nappier Connecticut ![]() 35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr. Pension BenefitGuaranty Corp. |
![]() 36. Hank Kim National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems ![]() 37. Paul Singer Elliott Management Corp. ![]() 38. Bailey Childers National PublicPension Coalition ![]() 39. Amy Kessler Prudential Financial ![]() 40. Judy Mares U.S. Labor Department |