WARREN — Legislation that would recover the lost pensions of thousands of Delphi salaried retirees is starting from square one in the U.S. House, but lawmakers behind the Susan Muffley Act are optimistic the bill will again be approved with bipartisan support.

It’s in the U.S. Senate — where the legislation stalled last year — where more support is needed.

“We are just a few short senators away from getting this bill through the Senate,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton. “With the Delphi Salaried Retirees advocacy, I believe that momentum will be on our side.”

Turner and Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Flint, Mich., on Thursday talked about their renewed push for the bill that would give relief to those salaried retirees whose retirement benefits were slashed when the former auto parts supplier went bankrupt in 2009.

“We both believe if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to have your dignity protected in retirement,” said Kildee. “That’s why we wrote the Susan Muffley Act, to restore the pensions to more than 20,000 Delphi salaried retirees.”

The bill, reintroduced this week in the House, would require the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to make up the difference between the partial retirement benefits PBGC already has paid retirees and what they originally were due in one lump sum. PBGC took over the pensions in 2009.

The retirees also would receive 6 percent interest on the retroactive pay to help ease the tax burden.

Then, moving forward, the retirees would receive their full pensions as if they never were disrupted.

House lawmakers approved the legislation in July by a 254-175 vote. It stalled in the Senate, not getting the procedural support it needed. An attempt to include it in a year-end spending bill also was unsuccessful.

More than 5,000 of the retirees live in Ohio.

Republicans in the last Congress argued, in part, the bill created a bad precedent that other plans controlled by the PBGC would follow. It also was viewed as a bailout.

Supporters, meanwhile, said the bill is about fairness and restoring the retirement benefits the salaried retirees rightfully earned.

“We’re going to work diligently to try to get this bill back out of the House again and over to the Senate, and then to try to persuade our fellow senators that this bill is paid for, this bill is rectifying an injustice and these retirees earned these benefits,” Turner said.

Bruce Gump of Howland, chairman of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association, said the government picked winners and losers in the auto crisis of 2009.

“They singled out Delphi salaried retirees for harsh treatment, deeming us as too small and too weak to fight back. It was a very disheartening day when one Auto Task Force member said our retirees had ‘no commercial necessity,’ ” Gump said. “While actions took place to assure certain union-represented Delphi workers and retirees received their full earned pensions, the government treated our group differently — something that has never happened before.”

For the group of retirees, its 13-year legal battle with the PBGC to try to win back the involuntarily terminated pensions ended in January 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the case.

Delphi, formerly Packard Electric that at one time was part of General Motors’ parts division, filed for bankruptcy in October 2005 and emerged four years later. While Delphi was in bankruptcy protection in 2009, it relinquished responsibility for all its employee pensions to PBGC.

In its own government-planned bankruptcy in 2009, it was determined GM would fund fully union pensions for Delphi hourly employees. The salaried retirees weren’t as fortunate and have argued their pensions should have been covered as well.

The bill is named after the deceased wife of a Delphi salaried retiree, David Muffley. Susan Muffley was a member of the association’s leadership team and when her health began to fail, and she chose not to see a doctor given the financial constraints on her family. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died in August 2012.