Biden’s Nomination for PBGC Director Withdrawn

Deva Kyle, an ERISA and tax benefits counsel, has been withdrawn as a candidate for the next director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, according to an announcement from the White House on Thursday.

President Joe Biden nominated Kyle for the director position in July. Ann Orr has been serving as acting director since April 30, when Gordon Hartogensis’ five-year term ended. Kyle’s nomination was referred to the Senate Committee on Finance and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, but neither held a public hearing on her nomination.

President-elect Donald Trump will now have an opportunity to nominate a director of the PBGC whose term would extend beyond Trump’s second term. Kyle’s withdrawal was announced alongside three other Biden administration withdrawals, as well as four nominations sent to the Senate, on Thursday as part of the political reshuffle in Washington ahead of the second Trump administration.

Trump nominated Hartogensis, who some industry watchers noted at the time had little to no experience relevant to the pension system, to serve as director after Trump removed the previous director, Thomas Reeder, three years into Reeder’s term.

More recently, however, Senator Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, criticized the PBGC in a letter to Biden in July, arguing that it is plagued by operational problems that have “cost taxpayers money, put pension plans at near-catastrophic levels of underfunding and caused delays that prevented pension funds from being able to quickly right their financial status.”

The senator also voiced concerns about the implementation of the Special Financial Assistance Program authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, notably the instance in December 2022 in which the PBGC overpaid the Central States Pension Fund by $127 million after the fund inadvertently included 3,479 dead participants in its relief request.

Cassidy also argued that the PBGC has created challenges for single-employer plans by “failing to timely provide necessary information that would help them correct their financial problems.” Cassidy urged Biden to choose a nominee who both acknowledged the PBGC’s shortcomings and had concrete plans to solve them in a manner “unafflicted by partisan politics.”

Kyle has been a counsel at law firm Cohen, Weiss and Simon LLP since 2022 and advises clients on a wide range of employee benefits, federal tax and legislative matters. She began her career in 2004 with the PBGC, where she eventually served as the staff director in the Office of Policy and External Affairs, leading the agency’s multiemployer pension policy efforts.

Kyle did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the withdrawal of her nomination.