Professor Norman P. Stein discussed a proposal to save the multiemployer pension system by requiring plans to save money and the U.S. Treasury to chip in $3 billion annually in a Nov. 21 interview with Law360.

The proposal under consideration by Congress would also repeal a 2014 law that allowed pension cuts while nearly doubling benefits that longtime workers could receive if their pension plans collapse.

“The proposal attempts to distribute the pain in an equitable manner among the stakeholders,” Stein said. “When everybody is unhappy about something in a proposal, I think that shows that it is an attempt to work out an acceptable compromise,” said Stein, adding that the proposal was “very promising.”

Stein said the new funding rules could result in plans that have been determined to be unhealthy trying to figure out how to regain fully funded status.

A nationally recognized authority on pension law, employee benefits and tax law, Stein has been a professor at the Kline School of Law since 2010.

He is secretary of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation and senior policy adviser to the Pension Rights Center. A member of the GAO’s Expert Panel on Retirement Security, he also served on the Department of Labor Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans and was a delegate at the White House Conference on Retirement Savings. He was twice elected chairman of the American College of Employee Benefits Council.