Date: 2006-05-03
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself 7 minutes. Mr. Speaker and Members of the House. my motion to instruct conferees on the pension conference that is now going on between the House and Senate is very simple. It says that any pension restrictions we impose on the Nations hardestworking employees and retirees must also be applied to the Nations CEOs and corporate executives. It says no more preferential treatment. legal loopholes. manipulation. or special exemptions for executives with the pensions of the various companies of this country. Today. the Enron criminal trials are reminding us of how Ken Lay and his merry gang ran Enron into the ground through a vast criminal conspiracy of greed and arrogance. all at the expense of consumers. the investors. and tens of thousands of employees who lost billions of irreplaceable life savings. Ken Lay and his cronies plundered the company by putting themselves above the law. beyond the rules. and shamelessly exploited legal loopholes that allowed them to walk away with tens of millions in golden parachutes and perks. while their employees were kept in the dark about the sinking ship of Enron. In fact. they were even advised by Mr. Lay to continue buying the stock while he and his family were selling the stock privately without telling the public or the employees. During the pension debate. President Bush took notice of the preferential treatment for corporate CEOs and executives in pension law. and he said. "If the rules are okay for the sailor. they ought to be okay for the captain." Well. the House pension bill ignores that admonishment. It sets up two sets of rules. one for the sailors and the other for the captains. one for the employrees and those who are in the penthouses. one for the employees and those who are in the corporate offices. Two sets of rules. both working. both spending a career perhaps trying to make a company successful but treated differently when it comes to retirement. Under the House pension bill. hardworking employees and retirees are punished when executives do not appropriately fund their pension plans. when the executives manipulate the pension plans to improve the bottom line. when the executives manipulate the pension plans so that they can get stock options so the company appears that it is doing better than it is. when they manipulate the pension plan so that they can terminate that pension plan. These employees then are denied the payouts. They are denied the benefit increases. They are denied the COLAs. That simply is not fair. and it is wrong. and this motion to instruct tells the conferees to stop it. to stop this privilege. to stop this discrimination against hardworking employees with their pensions. Executives are exempt from these restrictions under the pension plan if their plans are underfunded between 60 and 8.0 percent. They can take a lump sum pension plan. They can take it and leave the company. They get their benefit increases. They get their COLAs. And they frequently have taken the money and run. The House pension bill says that retiring ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond can take his $98 million pension in a lump sum and run. It says that Lee Raymond can take his golden parachute. his stock options. his cushy retirement package worth $400 million and run. He gets his lump sum. He gets his COLA. He gets his benefit increases. He gets his stock options. his pension increases. and his golden parachute. He gets all of that on top of the $686 million he earned from 1993 to 2005. But what happens to the employees? If that pension plan is not funded above 80 percent. those employees do not get a lump sum payment. They are stuck in that plan. They cannot exercise that choice. So here is old Mr. Raymond. Mr. Raymond of ExxonMobil. He gets to take $98 million out. Two of the pension plans are funded at about 60 percent. Mr. Raymond gets to take his money and go on his merry way. The employees. the roughnecks. the people in the oil fields. in the refineries. in the offices. in the research centers. they are stuck. They are stuck. They cannot take a lump sum payment. But it does not just apply to Exxon. This is just the most egregious case where they made a decision that he would walk away with $400 million in benefits. a $100 million lump sum payment. and the employees get none of that. But that is essentially what Ken Lay did. too. Ken Lay insured their pension plans. They take them off the books. They take them off the records so that. no matter what happens. when they go into bankruptcy. they are protected. So here is what happens: we are paying over $3 a gallon for gasoline. That has made Mr. Raymond at Exxon a lot of money. Mr. Raymond has been earning an average of about $144.000 a day. He has a golden parachute worth $400 million. and the House bill says to Mr. Raymond. you go ahead and take your lump sum. It says to Ken Lay. you go ahead and take your lump sum. It says to the CEO of United Airlines. you go ahead and take your lump sum even though you are putting your pension plan into bankruptcy. You can do that. You can protect yourself. Well. the President of the United States. he has not gotten a lot right. but he got this right. He said if it is good for the crew. it is good for the captain. And that is what this motion to instruct says. It. says that we have got to stop manipulating these pension plans for the benefit of the employers. for the benefit of the corporate officers. for the benefit of those individuals. as opposed to the working people. the people who are building these com-. panies every day around the world. In the oil industry. people are working in hostile environments. in hostile situations all over the world. But when it comes time .for their pension. they are treated as if it did not matter. asif they had nothing to do with the building of the wealth of a great company like Exxon or a great company like United. No. They go to court and they sever the social contract. They dispose of these people. People lost billions- of dollars in the United case. Those employbes were in bankruptcy. They lost their pensions. But when Mr. Tilton. the CEO. woke up that morning. he was $15 million richer than when he went to bed that night. That is just what he got for taking the company into bankruptcy. That does not talk about his pension plans and the rest of the protections that he got. The time has come. and I think America now sees it. that we have allowed the pensions of American corporations to be manipulated to provide these kinds of benefits. Pension plans have been used for every other purpose except providing a secure retirement to middleincome Americans who spend 25 to 30 years helping to build successful enterprises in this country. When it comes for their retirement. they are secondclass citizens. Vote for this motion to instruct and stop that kind of treatment of Americas workers.