At first glance, David Kane, 63, appears to be solidly middle class. He has a home on a lovely suburban street in Sandusky, Ohio, and a boat docked in the nearby marina.

But looks can be deceiving. Kane doesn’t have television or even a functioning wristwatch. He and his wife Dianne live on their boat, a 1976 Trojan Tri-Cabin in need of repair, for part of the year to save on utility costs. He does outdoor maintenance at the marina to pay for the docking fees.

After a 35-year career at Delphi, the primary parts supplier for General Motors, Kane expected retirement to look much different. He left the company at age 54 as it was downsizing, and he was offered a buyout.

But in 2009, Kane received word that, as part of the bailout to save General Motors, the pensions that he and 20,000 fellow Delphi salaried employees were promised would be reduced 30 to 70 percent.

Kane lost almost half his pension and now receives only $1,600 a month. He says it has been devastating. “It’s just a beat down, day in and day out, to struggle to get through.”

What makes it more difficult is that other Delphi workers who worked alongside Kane, members of the powerful United Auto Workers union, did not suffer the same fate. They are receiving their full pensions.

When the government stepped in to bail out GM, providing a total of $50 billion from taxpayers, it also had to deal with Delphi, which already was in bankruptcy, because GM needed Delphi’s parts to build its cars. In the process, Delphi’s pensions were handed over to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBCG), a government-backed entity that insures private pensions. The PBCG terminated the pension plans, which were underfunded at the time.

Then General Motors did something that the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, later called “unusual.” GM agreed to top up the pensions of 22,000 Delphi members of the United Auto Workers union – at a cost of $1 billion. That enabled the UAW workers to still get their full pensions.

But there was no such sweetener for the company’s salaried employees or for the non-UAW hourly workers. And because the PBGC has statutory limits on how much it can pay in benefits, their payments were reduced sharply.

“We were the group that was just kicked to the curb like yesterday’s trash,” said Bruce Gump, vice-chairman of the Delphi Salaried Employees Association.

Now, two congressional committees and the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (SIGTARP) are investigating the basis and motivation for this decision. Was this a political favor for a powerful union that backed President Barack Obama, as critics claim? Or was this a business decision by GM, based, according to the company, on an agreement originally negotiated in 1999 during Delphi’s spin off from the automaker? What role did the Obama administration play?

Inspector General Christy Romero, has said she’s looking into “whether the (administration’s) auto task force pressured GM to provide additional funding for those pensions.”

In a later agreement with the new GM, two other unions, IUE and USWA, were also topped up. Members of the Delphi Salaried Employees Association say they do not begrudge the union retirees their pensions, because they earned them. The salaried workers just want equal treatment, and they want answers from the government. 

Retirees hard hit by ‘broken promises’
Mary Miller, a divorced mother of four who worked at GM and Delphi for over 31 years, said the hit to her pension caused a true hardship.

“It's a struggle every day, and every time anything breaks, it's a near disaster,” she said, adding that she hasn’t had a working dishwasher for two years.

Miller had been counting on her full pension to help her start new career as a life coach.

“My plan was, ‘OK, I have a pension and I have health care. And I have a son in high school and sons in college -- and a daughter also.  But if we live very simply, I can make that pension stretch so that I can really have my dream.” 

Miller started the business anyway, but she says it is growing slowly because of the economy.

Miller has a friend, a former colleague at Delphi with whom she worked closely for several years in the same role, though he was paid hourly while she was drawing a salary. She can’t understand why he was treated differently.

“What made the work that that person did more valuable than the work I did? What was greater about the promise he received when he went to work for GM and Delphi than what I was told?”

Gump, who worked for General Motors and Delphi for almost 33 years and was a senior engineer when he retired, lost about 30 percent of his pension.

“Inside our organization we have lots of people that have seen their homes foreclosed,” he said. “They’ve had to declare personal bankruptcy. There’s been some families that have broken up over the stress associated with this. There’s even been a couple suicides.”

The DSRA retirees are a politically diverse group – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – but regardless of political stripe, many of them believe the Obama administration betrayed them. Howard Collins, a Democrat, said he voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but isn’t sure he would do so again. 

“I don't know if I will decide until I actually go in the voting booth,” he said. 

Did the government pick winners and losers?
As senior advisor on auto issues at the Treasury Department, Ron Bloom led the administration’s Auto Task Force. He insists the government was not involved in GM’s individual decisions but simply approved the overall plan as being viable and based on commercial rather than political considerations.

“What I think is a fair surmise is that General Motors made a judgment that there was a commercial necessity for treating the UAW the way they did,” says Bloom.  There was concern that the unions might interfere with the flow of parts from Delphi to the auto company, which could harm new GM. Topping up the union pensions ensured the work would continue.

“The UAW had commercial leverage in this case, which they utilized.”

Bloom now says he feels for the Delphi workers. “There's no making it nice. There's no saying it's OK. The only thing one can say is that it was done in a responsible and fair way relative to the rules of the road in a bankruptcy.”

His position was echoed by Treasury Spokesman Anthony Coley, who told NBC News, "As has been exhaustively documented, Treasury's consistent approach to the auto restructuring was to defer to GM's business judgment and not approve or disapprove individual business decisions. While the GM restructuring involved painful concessions from all stakeholders, President Obama's decision to stand behind GM and the American auto industry saved more than a million jobs."

But Bruce Gump, the Delphi salaried workers representative, calls that justification a “smoke screen.”

“I believe that what really happened was that this administration simply wanted to take care of their political base,” he said.

The administration has turned over thousands of documents related to Treasury’s discussions between GM, Delphi and the PBGC, but not to the satisfaction of members of the House Oversight Committee, House Ways and Means Committee, or attorneys for the salaried Delphi employees  They accuse the Treasury Department of stonewalling and withholding key documents.

Ron Bloom and key Task Force members Harry Wilson and Matthew Feldman refused to be interviewed by the special investigator general of TARP about the Delphi pension decisions for almost a year, until July, when they were called to testify before a house subcommittee.  Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, called their refusal to answer questions “a happy train of silence.”

The three have now complied and the special investigator general’s audit is nearing completion.

Emails and testimony from lawsuits and ongoing investigations suggest the administration was deeply involved in GM’s decisions and considered a list of “politically sensitive” issues, but so far there is no proof the pension decisions were driven by political favoritism.

For its part, General Motors maintains that by topping up the union pensions, the company was fulfilling an agreement made at the time of the Delphi spin-off. And GM holds that the fate of the salaried employees was in the hands of the new Delphi.

“Delphi’s salaried pension plan was fully funded, and it was transferred to Delphi at the time the new company was created,” GM spokesperson Greg Martin said in a statement to NBC News.  “Responsibility for the future health of that plan – including funding levels and asset allocation – rested solely with Delphi.  The new GM is not in a position to fund salaried Delphi pensions twice.”

In 2010, then UAW President Ron Gettelfinger expressed support for Delphi’s salaried pensioners.

"This is a grave injustice," Gettelfinger wrote in a letter to the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association. "While the restructuring of America's auto industry requires shared sacrifice and responsibility, Delphi's salaried retirees/former employees are being forced to bear extra burdens that are not warranted."

Seeking resolution
The salaried workers have bipartisan support for their cause.

Last week Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, sent a letter to Department of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the White House Counsel requesting compliance with a congressional request for documents.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio, has introduced legislation that would restore the salaried pensions using proceeds from the sale of the government’s shares of GM stock.

But legislation takes time. The group representing the salaried workers would prefer to receive their full pension directly from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which they say would not cost taxpayers a dime, because it receives its income from the premiums paid by the companies whose plans it insures.

Whether or not they believe the decision was made to appease an influential ally of the administration, the salaried retirees say that after a three-year struggle, it is just time to put things right.

“Really, that's in the past to be honest with you,” said David Kane. “You can't do anything about history. It's locked in. Where do we go from here? I'm more focused on what we do now to change the future. That's the only thing we can change.”

Kane’s wife, Dianne, lost her job around the same time his pension was reduced. Together, the couple has nine part-time jobs, but they are still barely making it.

“Our finances were based upon this scale, if you will, of expected income. And even with all the number jobs that we're working, it doesn't replace what we lost. It was easier sliding down the hill than to climb back up it,” Kane said.

Kane’s health has created additional challenges. Months before his pension was cut, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He also suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome.

Kane is still looking for full-time work but has had no luck. He suspects his age and poor health are a factor. Nevertheless, he remains hopeful.

“What I would like to see now is that portion of our pensions restored to the levels that they were before Delphi exited bankruptcy and did away with our pensions,” he said. “If I can get that portion back, I can make it. It's just too tough without it.”

Lisa Myers is NBC's senior investigative correspondent and Talesha Reynolds is an NBC investigative producer.

NBC News

Chimpanzees at the National Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Keithville, La., known as Chimp Haven.

Famed primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall says the decision by the National Institutes of Health to remove 110 of its chimpanzees from invasive biomedical research is a “hugely important first step” toward ending experimentation on man’s closest biological relative. But there is considerable controversy over where most of the chimps will be moved, and concern about the health of some chimps.

Today, in the wake of that controversy, the NIH tells NBC News that it is reconsidering the plan announced last month to send 10 chimps now living at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana (NIRC) to the National Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Keithville, La., known as Chimp Haven, and the remaining 100 to a research lab, Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.  NIH now says as many chimps as possible will be moved to Chimp Haven before the end of August 2013, and that eventually all 110 chimps will go there.   

“NIH is considering all options to try and move as many of the 110 chimpanzees to the Federal Sanctuary within the constraints of this timeframe and to eventually move all 110 chimpanzees to the Federal Sanctuary.  In the meantime, NIH must continue to care for the chimpanzees and Texas Biomedical can offer high-quality care until the Federal Sanctuary has the capacity to take all 110,” according to an NIH spokesperson.

NBC News’ Rock Center visited Chimp Haven and the Texas Biomedical Research Institute last year in a story about the morality and scientific necessity of invasive biomedical research and about whether older chimps that have lived their entire lives in labs should be retired to the relative freedom of a sanctuary.  

Watch the full reports here

In an interview with NBC News, Goodall praised NIH Director Francis Collins, who she said called her the day the decision was to be announced to tell her that all the  federally owned chimps now at NIRC will be transferred out of the lab and deemed “permanently ineligible” for invasive research. “He himself has led this movement,” Goodall said. “It’s a wonderful first step in a process that gets the chimps out of the lab.”

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, also called the decision to spare the chimps “a step in the right direction” but added “I am concerned that so many of these great apes are being relocated to another lab rather than to sanctuaries.”  NIH is officially deeming chimps headed to Texas Biomed as “research ineligible” rather than “retired,” an official said, because the status of “retired” can only be applied to chimpanzees placed in the federal sanctuary.

NBC News

A chimp is sedated to draw blood in the effort to find a cure for Hepatitis C at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

New Iberia Research Center was targeted in an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the U.S. in 2009, which raised questions about alleged abuses in the treatment of chimps. But both the lab and NIH say those allegations had nothing to do with the decision to remove the chimps. An NIRC spokesperson said that its research center “decided not to seek NIH funding for its chimpanzee program beyond August 2013. The ending of the NIH-chimpanzee program at NIRC … was not out (of) concern for the level of care that animals are receiving at NIRC.” An NIH official confirmed that “the sole reason for relocating the chimpanzees is to provide for their continued care…” 

Euthanizing chimps?
Internal NIRC emails raised the possibility of euthanizing at least three chimps that may be too sick to tolerate the stress of moving to a new facility. “There are several NIH owned chimps that are geriatric and are chronic clinical cases,” wrote an NIRC official on Aug. 1, 2012. “I have concerns about these guys making it through transit — we will want to consider human (sic) euthanasia,” wrote an NIRC official on Aug. 1. When contacted about these emails, a NIRC spokesperson told NBC News that no one is suggesting “that any chimps be euthanized rather than be shipped.” He said it’s likely the three chimps will meet the criteria for humane euthanasia within the next year, but if they don’t, discussions are under way with NIH about NIRC caring for them beyond the Aug. 31, 2013, deadline.

The NIH went even further. A spokesman tells NBC News today: “NIH has made it clear to New Iberia that euthanizing chimpanzees because they may be too frail to be relocated is not an option. While euthanasia was mentioned in New Iberia’s documents, NIH was not aware that New Iberia was considering proposing this option to NIH. The NIH is working on alternative arrangements to ensure that any chimpanzees deemed too frail to be relocated can remain at New Iberia if it is determined to be in the chimpanzees’ best interest.”  

Another issue: What happens to two epileptic chimps at NIRC — Monkey and Jet? An NIRC staff member wrote on Aug. 17 that they “SHOULD NOT GO TO CHIMP HAVEN (they will be used as poster children). I would rather they stay here.” Today, an NIRC spokesman told NBC News that this is not the institution’s official position and that “the phrase “poster child” was a shorthand way of expressing concern that the primates could be used to convey an inaccurate representation of NIRC’s care.”  He added that no research ever was conducted on the epileptic chimps.

Advocates for chimps are pleased by the NIH decision to forego further research on these 110 chimps, but are urging the NIH not to transfer them to another lab. “We look forward to working with NIH and the Congress to develop a workable plan to move all of the govern-owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries in the year ahead,” said Wayne Pacelle, Humane Society president and CEO. His group and others argue that moving all chimps to Chimp Haven would save taxpayers money.  

Chimp Haven says it can care for all 110 chimps from the NIRC, but would need $2.5 million in construction money. The sanctuary is partly funded by taxpayers, but also relies on private donations to fund operating costs.

Meet 'Rosie' and 'Ken': 2 chimps, many experiments

Sen. Collins argues that, beyond saving money, retiring ALL the chimps to the national sanctuary “also will help correct the pain and psychological damage that these animals experience as a result of being held in captivity in laboratories and subjected to experiments.” 

She is cosponsor of legislation that would ban invasive research on the approximately 1,000 chimpanzees currently housed in U.S. laboratories, unless it is deemed necessary for human health in combating a disease. Under the bill, invasive research on great apes — including chimps, gorillas and orangutans — would be phased out over three years after enactment. The measure would also establish a “Great Ape Sanctuary System Fund” within the Treasury Department to pay for the retirement, to a permanent sanctuary, of the roughly 500 federally owned chimps currently in labs. The bill has been approved by a Senate committee and Collins says she hopes the Senate will pass it during a lame-duck session after the election.

NBC News

Chimpanzees at the National Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Keithville, La., known as Chimp Haven.

Goodall argues that Congress has a moral obligation to eventually fund sanctuaries for all chimpanzees that have spent their lives in labs for research, “thanking them for their service to mankind.”

But for now, Goodall says her foremost concern is to free the remaining 453 federally owned chimps, as well as hundreds of privately owned chimps, from the threat of being used for invasive experiments.  Other NIH chimpanzees are housed at Texas Biomed, the Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research in Bastrop, Texas, and the Alamogordo Primate Facility (Chimpanzee Reserve) in New Mexico.

NIH says it still has made no decision on the fate of 14 chimpanzees that were transferred to Texas Biomed two years ago to be available for hepatitis-C experiments. This move rekindled the public debate over the use of chimpanzees in invasive biomedical research and was the focus of NBC’s Rock Center’s two-part segment, which featured two aging chimps, Ken and Rosie. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has petitioned NIH to retire these chimps, which veterinarians have said have health issues.

Additional resources: For more information on the National Chimpanzee Sanctuary, Chimp Haven, click here.  For more information on the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, click here.  For more information on Jane Goodall’s work and the Jane Goodall Institute, click here. To learn about a group of lab chimpanzees that Goodall helped get placed in the Fauna sanctuary outside of Montreal, Canada, click here. To learn more about the Great Ape Protection Act that Goodall is working to pass, click here.