Cox In The Henhouse

Lee Drutman

June 10, 2005

Lee Drutman is the communications director of Citizen Works and the co-author of the book The People’s Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy.

In Washington this past week, leaders of Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines told a Senate panel that they didn’t have the money to cover the pensions of 150,000 workers and retirees, and that they’d probably go bankrupt on account of it. If so, they would join their troubled competitors, U.S. Airways and United Airlines, who also broke their pension promises to thousands of employees and then turned to the government to cover at least part of the difference. (At $10 billion, United’s pension default is almost as big as WorldCom’s record-setting accounting fraud—though for whatever reason it has hardly produced the same uproar.)

These latest pension failures come closely on the heels of the resignation of William Donaldson as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange and the speedy nomination of free-market ideologue and corporate sycophant extraordinaire Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., to be the agency’s new head. Though the two events are certainly unconnected on the surface, both bode poorly for the ability of hard-working Americans to enjoy an adequate retirement.