Excerpt: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last week maneuvered to remove an airline pension funding provision from legislation to reauthorize funding of the Federal Aviation Administration.... The airline pension provision has been controversial for over a year, and bogged down the FAA legislation. In September 2007, the Finance Committee added the provision to the FAA bill to modify the relief provided for nonfrozen airline pension plans in the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The PPA permitted commercial airlines that do not freeze their defined benefit plans to pay off their pension liabilities over 10 years, and permits those airlines to use an interest rate of six percent to calculate future plan asset earnings.  MORE >>