Date: 2003-05-14
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. this motion to recommit provides that workers with 10 years of service with a company would have the choice of whether or not to accept a cash balance retirement plan or a defined benefit plan when a corporation decides that they want togwitch from a defined benefit plan to a cash balance plan. We do nothing about the corporations right to do so. That is simply up to the corporations. Many corporations are doing this in an attempt to save money. The question that my colleagues must answer is should they be able to save that money br dramatically jeopardizing the retirement nest egg and the retirement benefits of older workers in that corporation. The last time corporations did this before the moratorium. workers lost somewhere up to 50 percent. Last time. according to the GAO. older workers lost up to 50 percent of their retirement benefits. Individuals that were 50. 55. 60 years old. they had no ability to recapture those benefits. They could not work long enough. They could not make enough money. They could not save enough in those jobs. The question is whether we will allow them the election. Secretary Treasurer Snow said that when he was chairman of the. board at CSX Corporation. he recommended and the corporation did this because it was fair. He reminded us that when Congress switched its retirement plan. we allowed every Member in Congress at that time to have an election. He said that was the fair thing to do. He said when he was on the board of Verizon. that he insisted that they allow workers to have a choice in that plan to see which one they would do better under. The company could save the money for all new workers. and older workers would be made whole. The gentleman from Ohio will tell my colleagues that some 500 gorporations have converted. and they have made workers whole. That is because that is the law. They are changing the law. They will no longer be required to do that under the law. When Jesse James and Billy the Kid and Bonnie and Clyde stole the life sav: ings of people in this country. we hunted them down like dogs. Right now there are 300 corporations that have filed notice all over the country. all different sizes. affecting thousands of workers. that they are going to convert immediately upon the new Treasury ruling to a cash balance system. The question is whether or not we will protect these people against having their retirement benefits looted. After a person gives this kind of service to a company. and they are too old to recoup it. they ought to make sure that they do not lose that benefit. That is what this amendment does. and I am going to tell my colleagues. for those who do not think this will affect them. several years ago we had this operation before the moratorium. IBM. Kodak and others. and it blew up. On a bipartisan vote of over 300 Members of Congress. we sought to end that practice. The Clinton administration put on a moratorium. Those companies ended up giving their workers an election. It is the just and fair thing to do. There is no other remedy other than this amendment for those workers if the Treasury Department decides. as their original proposal did. that it did not matter whether we gave workers a choice or not.