Date: 2004-04-02
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I wish to begin by thanking the chairman. Mr. BOEHNER from Ohio. for trying to conduct a fair conference committee on this bill. H.R. 3108. the Pension Funding Stability Act. Regrettably. however. I must oppose- the conference report before the House today. However. I strongly urge support for the Andrews motion to recommit because it provides urgently needed relief for multiemployer plans. The conference agreement was significantly weakened after intense lobbying by the Bush administration to strike provisions that would have protected the longterm stability of multiemployer pension plans. While this conference report provides significant relief to many singleemployer pension plans. it is outrageous that it does not provide relief to the many multiemployer plans across the country that need relief. plans that include many small businesses and others that need shortterm relief. As a result of this deficiency. I oppose this bill. Last week. House and Senate Democrats and Republicans on the conference committee had an agreement that the final bill would include pension funding relief for the 20 percent of multiemployer pension plans hardest hit by the recent economic and financial market downturn. But then. 2 days later. the White House started to make clear to the Republicans that it did not want any help for multiemployer pension plans included in the agreement. Not for any substantive reasonjust political reasons. plain and simple. The White Houses opposition stemmed from the fact that multiemployer plans are administered jointly by employers and unions. And the Bush political appointees did not want any agreement that would help those unions. Even if it meant they would hurt the tens of thousands of small and large employers that are unionized and contribute to these plans. Even if it meant they would hurt the hundreds of thousands of working men and women and their families whose retirement security depends on the financial viability of these plans. This is pure and simple hardball politics of punishing. unions and undermining workers who earn decent wages and benefits. The Bush administration is doing everything it can to destroy middleclass America. This is the same administration that is about to promulgate regulations that would take away overtime pay from -millions of workers. Let us remember that this administration has done nothing to protect workers pensions. I wrote the administration in July 2002 to take action whenpension deficits skyrocketed from $26 billion to over $100 billion. It failed to act. Now. over a year and a half later. the problem is substantially worse. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation says that pension plans are $400 billion in the red nationally. the largest liability in history. and the PBGC itself is reporting an $11.2 billion deficit as of December 31. The General Accounting Office is so concerned that it has placed PBGC on its list of Federal programs that are at high risk of failure. The Bush administration and Congress failure to take decisive action on pensions. their failed economic policies and neglect of our manufacturing industries and the failure of some companies to honestly estimate their pension liabilities have together precipitated one of the largest underfunding of private pensions in history. The conference agreement before us today is a shortterm fix. Everyone recognizes that. And I agreed at the outset of this process that given the absence of any viable alternative at the moment. a shortterm fix was better than nothing. But this conference report does nothing to reform defined benefit plans to ensure their future soundness. And as I have said. the final report fails to provide relief to the broader universe of plans that need it. The conference agreement provides $80 billion in shortterm funding relief for the largest corporations by letting them use higher interest rate assumption to value their pension plan liabilities. And it permits a handful of struggling airlines and steel firms to delay for 2 years their underfunded pension plan contributions. But the conference agreement does almost nothing to help multiemployer pension plans that do not benefit from the other two provisions. The conference agreement only provides temporary funding relief to multiemployer pension plans that can meet five. -conditions. According to the respected Segal consulting company. almost no multiemployer plan could meet all of these five conditions. The Republicans will claim that the conference agreement does provide some limited relief to multiemployer plans. But. they cannot cite a single plan or company that will be covered. Once again. the Republican majority is exercising its political muscle at the expense of hard working Americans. Mr. Speaker. the administration must get serious about pension reform. The retirement security of millions of Americans depends upon timely actions by this Government. What we do here today is important to provide this relief. Companies need to shore -up their pension obligations. But the American peoples anxiety about the future of the retirement security is highly justified in light of this administrations and this Congress failure to seriously address the problems in our pension system. Once again. I appreciate the hard work of Chairman BOEHNER to try to accommodate the many interests in this bill and to try to conduct a fair conference meeting. But the final product does not fairly address the .many pension plans left without any relief here today and for that reason I regrettably oppose the conference agreement.