Date: 2006-07-20
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker and Members of the House. I would hope that when this vote comes on Monday. that the House would. once again. reaffirm its obligation and its commitment to older workers in this country. This is a defining moment for these workers. This is a defining moment about what kind of retirement many workers in this country who have been working for 2G or 30 years in a company. what kind of retirement they will have. 0l 1545 Will they have the retirement that was promised to them and that they have expected and that they have built their financial planning around. that they have built the decisions today about tomorrow around their families. their children. and others? That is really what this is about. The gentleman is* quite correct. They are quite close. They have been working very hard. It has been -a oneparty bill. but they have been working very hard. the Members of the House in this conference committee. and they are very close. Theyare just also very wrong. They are very wrong in how they treat the older workers of this country because. as we see from the GAOreport.- under the GAO report. under the plan that the Republicans want to bring to the floor.if theconversion plan is done the way it is allowed under the conference report. which will be Federal law. the average 50yearold worker will lose about $238 in income each and every month of their retirement plan. The question that most Members of Congress will not ask is. Where does that worker. where does that family. go to make up that income? Where do you go to earn the 40. the 60. the $80.000 you have to have over your retirement life to get that yield back? Most people cannot accumulate that kind of money in a 5- or 10year period of time. So these workers who are under assault in terms of the retirement health care benefits. their retirement benefits. where do they go? We know what the savings rate is. We keep telling America to save more. And the fact of the matter is most American families at the end of the month have very little left to save. It is simply not there. Can Congress be that insensitive to how most of America lives? Most of America is bombarded. with advice from Money Magazine. from CNN. from Lou Dobbs. from all these people about how to save for your retirement. And they try. Some could do better. But for many families they are doing the best they can. But one of the bedrocks for many people in their fifties is knowing that they have a retirement plan that they thought they could count on. But the fact of the matter is when they pick up and read the business section of the newspaper. they read the headlines of the newspaper. they see that some of the biggest. most reliable corporations in the country are changing their pension plans. United Airlines just went into bankruptcy. Without any showing of desperate need. they just got rid of the plan for their employees. Talk to those fight attendants when you fly home tonight or you fly home tomorrow. Talk to those pilots and realize the extent to which their retirements have been- devastated. absolutely devastated. But it has happened to people in all of the industries around the country. And all that we are saying is follow the model by companies that have done it the right way. companies like Verizon. companies like Federal Express. companies like Wells Fargo Bank. Honeywell. There is a way you can do this and you can realize billions of dollars of savings. which are necessary. These plans are going to be changed. but they ought to be changed in a way that protects the older workers. That is why the AARP. the American Association of Retired People. is so dead set against this provision. It recognizes the impact this is going to have on future retirees. It recognizes the impact it is going to have on current workers and on their ability to plan for their retirement. They want to act like this is a carefully crafted pension plan and anybody who wants to suggest another alternative is only for the status quo and does not care about pensions. The Senate voted 972 to treat these older workers right. It is the Republican leadership that has stepped in and twisted that away. We didnt get a chance to vote on that in the House. When I finally did get a vote after the bill passed. the House voted overwhelmingly to protect older workers. Another class of workers .who are at risk in this pension plan are the taxpayers. We now see that PBGC is telling us that current law is a better deal for the taxpayers than the plan they are coming up with to the tune of about $2 billion over the next decade. Dont shake your head. It is right here. You guys had this information for months. We just had to get it under a FOIA agreement under your wonderful bipartisan arrangements. So there is a lot to be concerned about with this pension plan. It is going tb have a lot of bells and whistles. a lot of tax breaks. It isgoing to have more things than a monkey going to the circus. And a lot of people are going to vote for it. But what it is not going to have. it is not going to have protection for older workers. And Members of Congress ought to understand that when those older workers start to come to you. as their pension plans are dramatically changed by companies with no obligation to protect workers 50 and over. they are going to want to know where you were. and this is a vote which will tell them where you stand on this. And. hopefully. you will influence the pension conference. because this can be done. As we said. the Senate. after long deliberations. on the pension bill. they voted 972 to do it the right way. So I would hope that people would support this motion to instruct. I would hope they understand what this truly means to working people in this country and to their families andto their retirement. It is a devastating picture when you meet your constituents who have lost their retirement. who have lost big chunks of their retirement. and they come up and they talk to you at the shopping center. they talk to you at the grocery store. they talk to you at a town hall. and they tell you what it means to their plans. We were all stunned as a nation when pensioners got their plans wiped out and devastated by Enron. We called those people criminals. Here we call them legislators. because people are going to get a devastating hit on their pensions and we are going to say it is the law. There we said it was a crime. We said it was a crime.