WASHINGTON—The chairman of a congressional conference committee said the panel has reached a tentative agreement on a final compromise bill to reform pension funding rules.

Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., speaking to reporters after a meeting of conferees, said: “I think everything has been resolved.” He did not offer details.

Sen. Enzi said provisions now are being written and that conferees will meet Thursday to try to reach a final agreement. If an agreement is finalized, the full House and Senate could vote on the bill as soon as early next week.

Conferees have been trying to resolve for months differences in bills passed last year by the House and Senate. The differences to be bridged include whether employers with underfunded plans and poor credit ratings should be required to make extra contributions to the plans, whether employers should continue to be allowed to offset extra pension contributions they previously made against current contributions, whether sponsors of cash balance plans should be protected against age discrimination suits, and whether commercial airlines should be given extra time to fund their plans.

Both the bills passed by the House and Senate contain several common features, including a new requirement that employers amortize plan liabilities over seven years—companies now, in some cases, have up to 30 years—and barring employers with significantly underfunded plans from boosting benefits.

There is broad support in Congress for toughening funding rules amid concerns that current rules make it too easy for employers to underfund plans and expose the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. to huge losses if the employers sponsoring those plans later run into financial difficulty and the PBGC has to take over the plans. The PBGC currently has a nearly $23 billion deficit.

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