Phaster the PBGC is not economically significant. It pays reduced pensions to old industrials whose defined benefit pension plans went bust. It will likely be bailed out if it becomes insolvent, but it won’t be that much money.
While not a good thing if a bunch of 85 year old widows of steelworkers see their pension cut another 15%, it just won’t have any larger effect.
Arguably it wouldn’t even be unfair. A lot of these plans agreed to benefits when inflation was high, and it was expected by everyone that inflation would reduce the obligations more than actually happened. So some of these old pensions would, as a worst case, just be reduced to the expected real value.
