Date: 2003-09-09
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to tlnk him so much for his battle on behalf of American working families and retirees for pension protection and safety that he has led in this Congress now for a number of years. Mr. Chairman. we are here again because of the relentless effort of this administration to empower corporations to cut the pensions of older workers in this country. If this amendment does not pass. the Treasury Department will go forward and provide a ruling that will make it safe for corporations to cut the pensions. the defined pension plans of older workers. Hundreds of corporations already have filed notice that they want to do this. they are simply waiting for the Treasury Department to make the ruling. We were here once before. and the Congress made a determination that this was unfair. it was inequitable. it was meanspirited and it was damaging the economics f retirees and thcir ability to provide for their retirement. The last time the gentleman led this effort. the General Accounting Office came forward and studied the impact of that effort and found that. In fact. many of these pensioners risked losing half of their pension. So the situation today is much the same as when the gentleman from Vermont first sounded the alarm a couple of years ago. But what has changed is. in fact. we now have a court opinion from the Federal District Court in the Southern District of Illinois that ruled. in fact. that IBM had violated the age discrimination protections when it changed its pension plan to accept a cash balance plan. What they did there was they ruled against older workers. They were going to deny older workers the pension benefits that they were entitled to. and they were going to get far less than younger workers were going to get. and that is age discrimination. because that is what they are doing. They are discriminating against older workers. 50. 55 years old. who have 15. 20 years at a company. Now. all of a sudden. they are going to find out that their pension plans have been cut in half. What does that mean? That means that those people who have worked hard. made their plans for retirement. tried to develop their retirement nest egg so they could have a standard of living to carry them through their retirement years. All that is now threatened. and. essentially. it is gone. Because where does an older worker go to get back that pension benefit when they are 50. 55 years old with that company? They cannot do that. They cannot do that. That is the unfairness of this. That is why AARP. the American Association of Retired Persons. supports our amendment. That is why the Pension Rights Center supports the SandersMiller amendment. That is why they support this effort to bring equity to this effort. What are we trying to say? Let the worker make a choice. Let the worker choose which benefit would help them the most. Companies under our legislation would still be allowed to convert to cash balances. but what they would not be allowed to do is to harm older workers and their families in the effort to do that. That is a significant amount of money to these workers. We have heard from workers all over the country who have emailed our office because they have heard that their company is thinking about this. We have heard from people in the financial industry. in the airline industry that have been through this. the telecommunications industry. industrial companies from all over the country who are now being made aware of the fact that they may lose their pensions. Mr. Chairman. American families are reeling in this economic downturn. They are reeling from longterm unemployment. from rising health care premiums. from steep declines in their savings and the 401(k) investments that were lost in the bursting of the stock market bubble. These people are scrambling to keep their health care benefits. to keep their pension benefits and to keep their jobs. This Congress should not now come along and tell them that we are going to put their pensions at risk. We know that Americans. the baby boomers. people my age and others. who are thinking abotit retirement over the next 10 or 15 years are now starting to focus on whether or not they will be able to do that. The pension plans that the administration has in order. that the Treasury Department is trying to put in place. put all that at risk. I would urge my colleagues. as they have in the past on a bipartisan basis. to support the SandersMillerEmanuelGutknecht amendment to make sure that. in fact. those pension plans are not put at risk and those families are not put in that economic difficulty.