When a company defaults on its pensions, workers must turn to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., created in 1974 after many notorious corporate failures left workers with next to nothing.

That's not counting the possible bankruptcy-triggered pension defaults at Delta and fellow airline Northwest, nor from auto parts maker Delphi - which also recently filed for bankruptcy and could dump its plan on the PBGC.

Some experts say the agency could default on its obligations within 15 to 20 years, creating a deficit of anywhere from $75 billion to more than $110 billion, depending on the estimate.

Even agency officials acknowledge that the situation has become a crisis, and are among those pushing for reform legislation now before Congress.

"We simply do not have the revenue stream currently to fill that hole," PBGC executive director Bradley Belt said. "Nor are we going to be able to cover future claims, especially when we only collect $1 billion a year in premiums (the amount charged to companies for insurance coverage by the PBGC), which have not changed since 1991. Clearly our current deficit will continue to grow under current law."

If the PBGC were to default, Congress isn't even required to step in. Legislators could walk away from the debt, leaving millions of retirees in the lurch and putting even more pressure on already-strained programs such as Social Security.

Still, he agrees that the proposed fixes are tough medicine, but he says they are needed to "go from set funding rules that are arcane and in some cases irresponsible to set funding rules that are real and up to date."

"We've been at this for at least five years now, and now we're in the environment that we have to deal with this," Boehner said. "We're all going to live longer, healthier and more productive lives and the needs that we have for retirement far exceed what our parents and grandparents had to have to meet their own retirement."

Most of the pension reform proposals now being considered by Congress would require companies to better disclose the status of their plans, rework regulations on tax credits, and raise premiums to be paid to the PBGC.

Although the House version allows financially healthy companies to go below a 100 percent level, the differing versions give companies about seven years to catch up. The rationale is that companies need to keep the required funds in the plan, to fulfill promises made to workers.

Delta Air Lines and other carriers have asked for more time, and got 20 years in the Senate version, while Boehner says he is against industry-specific relief.

Many experts say that such a short timeline will put an even bigger burden on companies already struggling to make required payments. And those companies will instead look to ditch their required payments, either through bankruptcy or other means, leaving it at the foot of the already deficit-laden PBGC.

"Most companies are saying that this is too much, too fast," said Lynn Dudley, vice president of retirement policy for the American Benefits Council, a Washington-based advocate for large employers. "They are not saying that they don't want to put more in ... but we believe the right thing to do is to allow these companies to pay as much as they can over as long as it takes. It's far better in our society for these companies to keep their promises rather than to shift it to the government and make people feel the pain at the grocery store."

"Seven years is a reasonable amount of time, compared with current law," Belt said. "But another point is what kind of message would it send to companies that have acted responsibly up until now if we allowed companies that have created this hole for themselves more time to make up the difference or make the hole worse?"

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