Washington, DC – Senate HELP Committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Ranking Member Bernie Sanders (I-VT) held a bipartisan hearing to highlight the success of the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) retirement system and how to overcome the problems years of underfunding by Congress has created for the agency and railroaders.
The RRB is unique in that it is an independent federal agency, fully funded through payroll taxes from railroaders and their employees. The RRB’s administrative budget is financed by those payroll taxes – NOT by the U.S. Treasury’s general fund. However, Congress still has the authority to tell the agency every year how much money they can take out of the trust fund to be used for operational expenses.
Despite the long-term financial health of the railroad retirement trust – which is projected to remain viable for at least the next 75 years – Congress has kept the RRB’s operating budget essentially unchanged for years.
“The RRB works, it is solvent, it is successfully providing a wide range of benefits to rail workers and families,” said Chair Cassidy in his opening remarks.
Ranking Member Sanders followed, recognizing the problems railroaders experience and the challenges the board faces by stating, “The bad news is Mr. Chairman is the RRB’s budget has been flat for several years.” He continued, “As a result of this insufficient funding, it takes an average of 470 days for the RRB to determine if a worker is eligible to receive disability benefits…rail workers are forced to wait up to 2.5 hours on the phone to receive the assistance they need from the RRB, many field offices in rail communities have been forced to shutdown or reduce their services, and even when it is determined that a worker is eligible to receive disability benefits, it can takes 18 months or longer to get those benefits, and in my view that is unacceptable.”
Jeff Joines, Government Affairs Director for the Brotherhood of Maintenance and Way Employees stated, “while rail labor and the Class I railroads don’t agree on a lot these days, one thing we do agree on is a strong and functioning RRB. That is because of the importance to the workers and management alike.” He further stated, “Railroad retirement is the best retirement out there, full stop.”
Last year alone, the RRB provided services to 475,000 retirees and their families, 8600 railroaders requiring unemployment insurance, and 19,000 railroaders requiring disability benefits.
Tell Congress to fully fund the RRB and protect our hard-earned railroad retirement benefits—click here to take action!