Date: 2006-07-25
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker. my colleague on the other side keeps saying that this is somehow. a partisan charade to score points. There are just a little over 200 Members of the Democratic Party in this Congress. and these votes have carried 258. 308. 299. 237. Clearly. there is bipartisan agreement that as we write this pension bill. as we deal with pension reform. we ought to make an effort to try to deal with the plight of these workers in the fairest possible way we can. Let us look again quickly at what we are trying to do here. We are trying. one. to protectolder workers who have a very limited ability to gather additional economic resources as they end their work years. to make up for a dramatic cut in their pension plans. All we are saying is that those workers ought to be protected. those who are 5 years away from the pension plan. Not a radical proposal. Not a partisan proposal. It passed the Senate 972. By an overwhelming bipartisan vote. we have asked the conferees to invoke that measure. We have also tried to say that those airline pilots that were forced to retire at age 60 due to Federal law. a Federal law that we are now considering changing to 65. but because of the bankruptcy of the company and the dumping of the plan by United and others into the PBGC. those pilots ought not to be harmed because they had no ability to reach 65 in their employment. The Federal law made them quit. and they ought not to be harmed in that situation. They may have never been harmed but for 9/11. but for the run up in fuel prices. They didnt do anything wrong. but they find themselves taking a double hit through the bankruptcy and through the PBGC rules. Then we said let us try to save the airline industry. Let us stretch this out. For those plans. mind you. they have frozen their pension plans. They comply with the fequirements of the Senate bill. and we have said let us give. them time to recover their economic health and hopefully save these pension plans. We do not know yet. but again on a bipartisan basis overwhelmingly. the House voted to do that. Then we said let us make sure that we exhaust all of the remedies before we dump these pension plans onto the taxpayers. Let us make sure that we have exercised all of the effort. that we have bargained in good faith. that we have searched every way to avoid this from becoming a taxpayer liability. Again. passing 972. the Senate went in that direction and we didnt. They refused those amendments to the legislation. And. finally. the issue of basic fairness. one that so struck the people of this Nation when they saw how Enron manipulated thepension systems. how they manipulated the stock sales to those pension systems by the executives. and. finally. how they manipulated the company into the downward spiral of bankruptcy and people lost their entire livelihoods. This bill says that. as Mr. KUCINICH pointed out. if this plan is not at least 80 percent funded. you can provide no new benefits to the employees no matter what the reason for that underfunding is. but unless it. is 60 percent underfunded. you can keep providing benefits to the executives. There is just a fundamental element of fairness. And again I think by over 258 votes. on a bipartisan basis. the House sent these instructions to the conferees. This is part of the legislative process. I am here because this is a privileged motion. We recognize the need to communicate from the full House to the conferees on measures that we continue to favor as the conference committee goes forward. and we have done that. But the fact of the matter is that now it appears. certainly from newspaper reports. which I wouldnt know because we have been shut out of this conference committee. The Republicans do not conference with the Democrats in the House. They do not honor that democratic principle. They do not honor that democratic history. So we only know what we have been told through the grapevine. We know in talking to the. Democratic and Republican Senators. and we know a little bit by what we read in the press. and it appears that. in fact. in each and every one of these points where the House has spoken with an overwhelping voice to protect the pensions HS5li of workers. of retirees. and of their families. that each and every one of these is going to be disregarded by the conferees. This is a last attempt to try to bring some openness to this conference. to try to bring some bipartisan participation to this conference committee. and to bring the will of the House. which I think in these cases when we are hearing about pensions. when you go home and you talk to your constituents and you have your town hall meetings. you see how anxious people are about their health care benefits. about their retirement benefits. about their retirement security. Yet somehow those conferees cannot get that message. Maybe they have been in Congress too long. Maybe they are insulated from it. Somehow they just.cannot get it. Well. life outside the Beltway is very precarious for a lot of employees anda lot of industries. And the question that comes to us is whether or not we are going to make an effort to have a pension bill that recognizes the fairness and the equity. Again. this is not some partisan bill. This is not some bill thought up in the last few moments. The fact of the matter is these provisions are contained. for the most part. in the Senate bill. We do not ask to go beyond that. In the Senate bill that passed the Senate 972. And. in fact. if we do that. there will be some economic justice for these retirees and these workers. There will be some economic fairness for these retirees and these workers. And there will be. most importantly. some sense of retirement security for millions of Americans that every day they pick up the paper and they see that yet another group of employees. another company is making a decision about reducing. getting rid of. terminating. freezing the pension plans and the health care benefits of those individuals. We owe them this legislation to deal with them in a fair fashion. in an equitable fashion. legislation that can increase the retirement security of these families. I ask for an "aye" vote on the motion to instruct.