White House seeks $1 billion to raise Delphi retirees' pensions

The White House asked Congress on Wednesday for $1 billion to raise the pensions of former Delphi workers, reopening a bankruptcy-era dispute over whether taxpayers should help restore benefits cut during the auto-parts supplier’s collapse. The request came as part of a broader package that also sought $500 million for Washington-area construction projects, $1 billion for New York Penn Station and more flexibility for the Federal Aviation Administration inside the $12.5 billion air traffic control modernization program.

Delphi was spun off from General Motors in 1999 and filed for bankruptcy in 2005. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over Delphi’s six pension plans in August 2009 after the plans were terminated in May and July of that year. PBGC, the federal insurer for private-sector defined-benefit pensions, does not guarantee every promised dollar, and its statutory limits left many Delphi retirees with less than the full pensions they had been told to expect.

The cuts were uneven. The Government Accountability Office found that some Delphi workers kept full benefits because of union-backed agreements with General Motors, while many others saw reductions because the plans lacked enough assets. That split has kept the case politically alive and turned Delphi into a shorthand for the damage industrial restructuring can do to middle-class retirement security.

The White House’s request would benefit more than 21,000 salaried retirees, including about 5,180 in Ohio, according to the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association. Congress has already kept the issue on the table this year: the Congressional Research Service said multiple restoration bills were pending as of January 2026, including the Susan Muffley Act of 2025, H.R. 1357 and S. 1950, along with the Delphi Retirees Pension Restoration Act, H.R. 1895. One Senate proposal would repay lost benefits from the past 15 years with 6% interest and fully restore pensions going forward.

By putting the request into a larger spending package, the administration is tying an old labor grievance to a wider legislative bargain that spans infrastructure, transit and aviation. For Delphi retirees, the ask could mean at least partial recovery of income lost in the financial crisis; for Congress, it forces a choice between treating the pensions as a special correction to a long-standing injustice or as a precedent that invites more targeted federal rescue requests.