H.R. 1357 — Susan Muffley Act of 2025

This section establishes the short title of the Act as the “Susan Muffley Act of 2025.”

This section revises the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s (PBGC’s) guarantee calculation for 6 specified terminated single-employer pension plans by requiring PBGC to treat the guaranteed monthly benefit as the participant’s or beneficiary’s full vested plan benefit, rather than the lower normal benefit guarantee subject to ERISA’s phase-in and maximum guarantee limits. As background, PBGC insures private-sector defined benefit pension plans under section 4022 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) when they terminate with insufficient assets. This section also requires PBGC to recalculate benefits already determined before enactment and adjust future monthly payments as soon as practicable. It further directs PBGC, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Labor, to make a lump-sum payment within 180 days after enactment to each eligible participant or beneficiary for past underpayments, including an additional amount to reflect foregone interest at a 6 percent annual rate on each past-due amount. Eligible participants and beneficiaries are those in pay status or eligible for future payments as of enactment, whose applicable payments do not exceed their full vested plan benefits, and who are not covered by the 1999 General Motors-union top-up agreements for certain transferred hourly employees. This section defines the 6 covered plans as the Delphi Hourly-Rate Employees Pension Plan, the Delphi Retirement Program for Salaried Employees, the PHI Non-Bargaining Retirement Plan, the ASEC Manufacturing Retirement Program, the PHI Bargaining Retirement Plan, and the Delphi Mechatronic Systems Retirement Program. It also preserves PBGC’s prior asset-allocation determinations under ERISA sections 4044(a) and 4022(c) and subjects new recalculation and lump-sum determinations to PBGC’s administrative review process.