Heart Wrenching Personal Suffering Caused By Obama Administration’s Termination of Delphi Pension Benefits

Breaking News today at the Daily Caller:

Emails obtained by The Daily Caller show that 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.

The move, made in 2009 while the Obama administration implemented its auto bailout plan, appears to have been made solely because those retirees were not members of labor unions.

The internal government emails contradict sworn testimony, in federal court and before Congress, given by several Obama administration figures. They also indicate that the administration misled lawmakers and the courts about the sequence of events surrounding the termination of those non-union pensions, and that administration figures violated federal law.

Delphi, a 13-year old company that is independent of General Motors, is one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers. Twenty thousand of its workers lost nearly their entire pensions when the government bailed out GM. At the same time, Delphi employees who were members of the United Auto Workers union saw their pensions topped off and made whole.

The White House and Treasury Department have consistently maintained that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) independently made the decision to terminate the 20,000 non-union Delphi workers’ pension plan. The PBGC is a federal government agency that handles private-sector pension benefits issues. Its charter calls for independent representation of pension beneficiaries’ interests.

Ace sums up:

So the Administration made a ruthless decision to benefit its union allies over non-union workers. And then claimed they had not made this decision at all; an “outside” group, the PBGC, had made the decision.

But it turns out Treasury  “disinvited” the PBGC from discussions about the pensions, thus blocking them from making any of the decisions they are in fact supposed to handle. They weren’t even allowed in the room.

And now  the Obamahoods who looted the pensions of these non union employees, are now calling Mitt Romney the reverse Robin Hood for stealing from the 99%?….

The audacity.

For two years now, Michelle Malkin has been reporting on The Delphi Economic Horror Story:

The White House believes it can win back depressed and economically stressed voters by turning President Obama into the storyteller-in-chief again. But victims of Obama’s Chicago politics don’t want to hear any more of his own well-worn tales of struggle and sacrifice. They’ve got their own tragedies to tell — heart-wrenching dramas of personal and financial suffering at the very hands of Obama.

Consider the real-life horror story of 20,000 white-collar workers at Delphi, a leading auto parts company spun off from GM a decade ago. As Washington rushed to nationalize the U.S. auto industry with $80 billion in taxpayer “rescue” funds and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members’ costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts. In addition, the nonunion pensioners lost all of their health and life insurance benefits.

The abused workers — most from hard-hit northeast Ohio, Michigan and neighboring states — had devoted decades of their lives as secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales employees at Delphi/GM. Some workers have watched up to 70 percent of their pensions vanish.

John Berent of Marblehead, Ohio, lost one-third of his pension: “I worked as a salaried employee for GM (30 years) and Delphi (10 years). After 40 years of dedicated service, I was forced to retire. Then Delphi terminated my health care, life insurance, vision, dental, then terminated the pension plan. Everything I worked 40 years for was wiped out.”

Kelly Fabrizio of Franksville, Wis., saw her pension reduced by 55 percent after working 30 years at Delphi/GM: “I am truly scared for my future. Every day I wake up, shake my head and say out loud — This Is Not How It Was Supposed To Be.”

Roger Hoke of Columbus, Mich., and his wife were both longtime Delphi workers. His pension shrunk by more than 40 percent: “After 33 years with GM and another 10 with Delphi, what did I do wrong to deserve such a fate?”

Bruce Gump, a former Delphi worker, testified at a hearing Examining the Delphi Bankruptcy’s Impact on Workers and Retirees, December 2, 2009.

You can listen to the whole thing, but starting especially at 3:21:

A woman who was forced into retirement at age 54 and had been working 30 years of dedicated service has lost all of her healthcare insurance and will lose more than half of her pension. She could barely afford to purchase a high deductible insurance policy to provide some protection for herself and her self employed husband. Two weeks later she found out she might have cancer. Because of the high deductible policy that she had she had to bare the entire  burden of the costs of the tests to determine if she would live or die.

Anyone on the Romney campaign want to follow up on that story? Or any of the 20,000 or more other tragic stories coming out of the Delphi disaster, Obamahood orchestrated?

Charles Cunningham, a former Delphi worker, also testified at the hearing examining the Delphi Bankruptcys Impact on Workers and Retirees in December 2, 2009. He hit the Obama administration on its lack of transparency.

We believe that further significant evidence concerning the discrimination against the Delphi salaried retirees exist in the Treasury and automotive Task Force documents related to the GM and Delphi bankruptcies. We’ve requested these documents under the FOIA over two months ago, but the production of these documents by the Treasury has not been forthcoming. In fact, a written request for these documents was also sent by Senator Enzi following a Senate Hearing on pensions on October 29, 2009. To date, this request has also been ignored……This is not transparency. This is not what we would expect from our government. I think it’s outrageous that we don’t know why we were treated in this manner…and our Congressional Leaders can’t know it.

Nearly three years later, we finally know the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Geithner, likely on orders from the White House, was the driving force behind the horrendous  Delphi disaster that victimized 20,000 workers.

I bet a large number of these folks wouldn’t mind appearing in a Romney ad to tell their stories, either.

UPDATE:

I see the Romney camp is already plumbing these depths.

Here’s an ad Mitt did back in May:

A new ad by the conservative advocacy group, Let Freedom Ring just released a new ad .