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

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentlewoman from New York for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker. today we confront an issue that is absolutely fundamental to the interests of our constituents. to their wellbeing. and the question of whether or not they will have the assets to properly retire in the future. and that is because we address the issues of the security of the American pension system. In the wake of the worst pension scandals in recent history. the response of the Republican congressional leadership is to see no evil. hear no evil and do no good. Once again. in the shadow of the failures of Enron and Global Crossing. and with the new disclosures about Delta and American Airlines. the Republicans bring forward a pension bill that does nothing to help employees. but includes lucrative benefits for corporate interests. How tonedeaf can they be? Pension scandals that move from page 3 of the business section to page 1 in every newspaper and magazine of popular nature of this country. but it is still the business as usual for Republicans in Congress. The only problem they see is that the investment companies are making even more money. while pensions and 401(k)s of employees dwindle with less and less. The pension bill the Republicans want to steamroll through the House today fails to address the pension scandals that have outraged Americans and left so many Americans destitute. It is as though Enron and Global Crossing and these other pension scandals never happened. It is business as usual for business. and let the employees fend for themselves. The heart of the Republican bill would change the law to allow investment firms for the first time to give biased and conflicted financial advice to employees. something that is currently prohibited under the law. Does this make sense when many of these same investment firms that would be giving the employees this advice just copped a plea to Eliot Spitzer. the New York attorney general. if firms like Credit Suisse. First Boston. Bear Stearns. JP Morgan. Chace. Goldman Sachs and many others just paid out over a billion and a half dollars in committing these kinds of abuses? Now. I recognize that they do not think they copped a plea. because they said they did not admit any wrongdoing. But they paid $1.5 billion just in case they might have. That $1.5 billion is chump change alongside the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars that people lost in their pension plans during the stock market bubble and because of conflicted advice and bad advice. Now. here we are 2 years after Enron. and we are coming back to simply allow the same thing to happen that happened in those corporate scandals. It is no wonder that the American public. the small investor is reluctant to return to the stock market. It is no wonder they are reluctant to invest again in mutual funds. because they recognize the devastation that they received at the hands of what was essentially criminal activity. Today. the Republican bill makes that activity legal. That is why the Attorney General. Eliot Spitzer. of New York said this about this legislation: "This legislation opens the loophole that will sharply erode. rather than enhance. the safeguards for employees seeking independent and untainted advice about how to invest their retirement savings. Clearly. this bill puts the interests of Wall Street firms far ahead of the interests of millions of working Americans who simply want a fair shake in making sound decisions about their retirement investments." That is what the American public is entitled to. That is what the people are entitled to as they contemplate how to piovide for their future retirement. That is not what this legislation does. That is not what the Republican legislation proposes. It now says that those firms can provide that conflicted advice to our constituents and to the workers. and that is what we should not allow in this legislation.