Dozens of retired teamsters held a rally Tuesday just outside the government agency tasked with overseeing retirement funds.
Congressman Emanuel Cleaver joined the rally near Union Station at the Employee Benefits Security Administration Offices to raise the profile of a bill introduced Tuesday by Senator Bernie Sanders and co-sponsored by Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill.
The Keep Our Pension Promises Act, or NOPPA, would reverse a provision in a 2014 omnibus bill that could impact the pensions of millions of retirees.
John C. Anderson, the Co-Director of Missouri - Kansas City Committee To Protect Pensions, said the worst-case scenario for an average retiree if NOPPA doesn’t become law is bankruptcy.
“They’ll go bankrupt and fall on taxpayer assistance,” said Anderson.
Cleaver said he supports Sanders’s bill.
“If you work somewhere for 30 or 40 years and you believe that when you retire you’re going to have a pension and then you wake up one day and they say, ‘Oh it’s been cut in half,’ something is wrong,” said Cleaver.
