Employee Retirement Income Security Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I want to acknowledge that Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio and Congressman Rick Nolan of Minnesota had scheduling conflicts. They were here earlier, and we thought this Special Order would start earlier. And I want to say thank you to both of them so very much for their strong support of the pension benefit rights of America's workers and retirees.

Tonight I rise to bring a very serious situation to the attention of the American people, a situation that demands justice. It relates to something called ERISA, or the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, passed decades ago that says when workers work and accrue benefits for retirement, those are sacrosanct. They are earned benefits and no one can cut them. ERISA promises that those retirees will receive the earned benefits that they worked so hard for.

Mr. Speaker, I want the American people to know that today I stood with thousands of America's workers out here on the lawn facing the Capitol. American retirees, their families, and supporters are here in our Nation's capital to save their hard-earned pensions that should be guaranteed under the laws of this country. They are here in Washington because Congress abandoned them. They were abandoned by the executive branch, too.

What has happened is that hundreds of thousands of American workers are getting notices in the mail. These are current beneficiaries, people who are already retired, who are getting notices that their pensions are being cut by half, by 30 percent, some as much as by 70 percent under something that passed here in the Congress called the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act.

But it didn't pass on its own, as a freestanding piece of legislation. It was stuck in a gigantic bill--we call it a must-pass bill--that, in December of 2014, if it had not been passed, the government would have shut down. The problem is most Members of Congress had no idea that was even in that bill. That section was airlifted into what was called the CR/Omnibus, the continuing resolution appropriations bill of that year. But on the section that dealt with pension rights, which had nothing to do with the appropriations process or the continuing resolution, these pension cuts were dropped in. There was no floor debate, there was no separate debate on that issue.

There were no amendments allowed. People, Members didn't even know what was in that section of the bill.

So that Multiemployer Pension Reform Act, they call it MPRA, was supposed to solve one crisis, and that is a shortage in the funds currently in that particular pension fund; but it placed the solution on the backs of the workers, the people who had earned those benefits themselves. Retirees who never caused the financial shortfall are going to bear the entire burden of the shortfall in that fund.

In reality, people in Ohio--just who were Ohio Teamster retirees, nearly 48,000 retirees in Ohio, the State most impacted in the union-- are now getting notices that their pensions are going to be cut. Overall, there are over 270,000--a quarter million--Teamster retirees, alone, across our country who are being affected; and, of course, some of them were with us today.

Over the last year, I have heard extensively from retirees who will see their pensions dramatically reduced--dramatically reduced--if, in fact, these cuts are approved by the U.S. Treasury Department.

These Americans did everything our country asked them to do as productive citizens. They went to work. They worked for decades. They worked for companies that matched that money, and they thought they would have a secure retirement--guaranteed. The law says, under ERISA, their retirement income will be guaranteed. But now it is a promise not being kept, and they are facing a stark reality. These workers earned their benefits. No one has the right to take them away.

Imagine working for 30 years as a truck driver, where your work takes you away on long trips for weeks at a time--time away from your family, time away from your community, countless missed family gatherings and life moments you will never get back, but you are a good worker so you do it. It is a good job with good pay, a solid middle-class living, a chance to make life better for your family and children, and, with it, all the promise of a reasonable and secure retirement in later years, if you can make it, doing that hard work.

Imagine that you retire with your earned, predictable pension you have worked for your whole life. You are in your seventies, and a hastily passed government law reduces your pension from $3,500 a month to $1,400 a month--poof, just like that, through no fault of yours. You did everything you were supposed to.

This example is not the exception of what is happening to the American people; it is the rule.

Now, let me tell you, truck driving is hard work. It is debilitating on bodies, the bouncing, hopping out of that truck, many workers having to load the truck, as well as drive the truck, and then unload the truck, leaving many of these retirees disabled from work they did for 20 and 30 years.

I hear countless stories of how retirees are caring for their children, some of whom who have disabilities, supporting their own ill and aged parents, or supporting children and grandchildren with life expenses which, the last time I looked, aren't going down.

Electric bills are up. Food is up. It is not so easy to make it in retirement years. These pension cuts impact more than just the individual who earned the pension. Literally, these cuts impact millions of Americans and the communities in which they reside.

The House has continued to let these retirees down in its failure to hold even a single hearing to fully understand their financial plight. Can you imagine that? A federally guaranteed income secured, been in the law for years, now you have got hundreds of thousands of Americans impacted and Congress is dead as a doornail. They are not doing their job, even as these workers face these tremendous cuts.

Now, one of the major funds that is affected was called Central States, and it was the first fund being affected--where its workers, pension retirees, were being affected--that filed an application with the Treasury Department to restructure benefits. But that application is only the first of many funds, pension funds, that will seek cuts in the years ahead.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation reports that 150 multiemployer plans--covering a million and a half participants--are in grave risk of insolvency. With those cuts, entire communities will feel the economic impact.

What is more shameful is this was caused, in large part, by the role played--get ready--by the large, multinational banks. Let me list three of them for you: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Northern Trust. You see, the Central States Pension Fund is the only major private pension fund where all the discretionary investment decisions are made by financial firms, not our government. There was a court order from 1982 that has made the decisions for the retirees' billion-dollar fund. So the government basically turned this money over to the big banks.

Does this sound familiar?

This was the result of the Department of Labor wrestling control of the fund, back in the eighties, away from organized crime, who used funds as their own piggy bank to build parts of Las Vegas. But the real irony here is that the Teamsters' pension fund disappeared more quickly under Wall Street than it did under the mob. How about that?

Ask the retirees how they feel, and they will tell you they got their money under the mob control. And I am not arguing for mob control. I am arguing for fair treatment of pensioners in our country and getting the money they earned.

Time has not been friendly to the trucking industry, with deregulation decimating good-paying jobs in trucking companies across the country and bankruptcy laws allowing hundreds of companies to exit the fund without paying their full withdrawal liabilities.

Lots went wrong by the big shots making the decisions, but the people paying the price over this 30-year period are the workers, and that is wrong. That is wrong.

The fund was hit particularly hard by the turmoil in the markets during the dot-com bubble and then followed by the Great Recession and financial crash during 2007 and 2008. Guess what. The fund, the pension fund, lost nearly 40 percent of its assets as it appears to have been overly invested in risky assets by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Northern Trust.

We are calling for a forensic audit of what happened every year with the investments of this fund and who did it, who benefited, and now, who is being asked to pay the price.

How tragic that Congress will bail out the big banks, but then they will throw millions of truck drivers and middle-class retirees who worked hard for a living under the bus--or under the truck.

Central States will tell you that these dynamics have caused the shortages, but the handwriting has been on the wall for a rather long time. While other funds diversified and recruited additional employers, something happened in this fund that is atypical. But why should the workers be blamed for what the managers and the bankers did?

Immediately after that law was passed, called MPRA, I set to work to correct the unfairness to America's workers and introduced H.R. 2844, the Keep Our Pension Promises Act. It now has nearly 50 cosponsors--50.

The idea here is--we call it KOPPA--the Keep Our Pension Promises Act would prevent these draconian cuts to the earned pensions of our workers by filling the financial gap in the fund and reinstate the ``anti-cutback'' provisions in ERISA, the bedrock of that law.

We have to keep our promises. ERISA promised that pension benefits in multiemployer plans would be cut only when a plan runs out of money; and even then, the benefit of the retirees should be the last to be cut, not the first to be cut.

No wonder that the middle class is mad at Washington. No wonder we see this Presidential race that is occurring, where there is a lot of hubbub around the country. The public is sick and tired of Washington doing this kind of thing to the American people. The public sees that this is just another broken promise by Washington and another rigged bill that went through here by the top leaders in Congress that most Members didn't even know was in there.

The system is rigged. A Senator from the other body said that. Well, by golly, on this one, in terms of benefits of pension retirees, it sure is rigged.

There are more than a million honest Americans who, for decades and decades, worked hard. They followed the rules, and they are now getting thrown to the wind by their own government.

Imagine if Congress were to cut Social Security benefits in the same way, by two-thirds, in a retiree's monthly pension payments. There would be riots in the streets.

My colleagues, if you ever wonder why tens and tens of millions of Americans are angry, deeply disappointed, and feel betrayed by their government, look no further than this issue.

I want to say to all the Americans who drove across the country today to be with us here in Washington, to spend the money for that gasoline, to take time away from their families--frankly, some of the men and women who were there couldn't even stand up on the lawn. They had to sit along the concrete fences along the side because their bodies simply can't hold them up as they did when they were younger. We can do better than this as a country.

The bill that we are offering, H.R. 2844, basically would tax some of the assets of the most wealthy in our country and fill the gaps between now and 10 years from now so these workers wouldn't have to take these cuts. It is truly unfair to them.

It is time we operate, in this Congress, with the oversight that this institution was built upon. It is time for the committees of jurisdiction to do their job. Give these Americans, who are patriotic people--many of them are veterans. Many of them have served our country so ably in so many ways. They have been good family people. They don't need to have their benefits cut in their retirement years.

It has caused such havoc in these families, the worry alone, the blood pressures that have gone up and the heartache and the lost sleep of losing what they worked for their entire life. What is happening to them is wrong. It is not just.

It is time for the Treasury Department to deny the Central States application to cut benefits, and it is time that this Congress keep our pension promises to the American people who worked so hard, paid their taxes, helped build their families, helped build their communities, had a great work ethic, went to work every day, many of them getting up real early before the sun even rose. And now to treat them like this, in their golden years, how wrong is this?

I am so proud to rise on this floor this evening to speak on their behalf. They deserve a better day. I expect the people in this Congress and I expect the executive branch to dole out justice fairly to them and not make them the victim of the bad decisions that were made by the biggest banks in this country and by the managers of those funds that these workers dutifully paid their dues into over the years, coming out of their check every pay period. It is not right to cut their benefits. They do not deserve this.

Those funds need additional time to recover following that 2008 crash. You don't recover in 7 or 8 years, not from that kind of downfall in the economy. Why make the workers pay for the mistakes of others? It is just so wrong.

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to come down here this evening urging my colleagues to support the Keep Our Pension Promises Act, to urge them to sign onto our bill, H.R. 2844.

I say to those workers and retirees across our country who are likely listening: Keep up the faith. Keep writing your Representatives. Keep writing the U.S. Treasury Department, Mr. Ken Feinberg, who is in charge of this solution.

We want to make sure that justice prevails; and if we speak out, if we don't give up, if we make sure we stand up and talk to our Senators, talk to our Representatives, talk to all the Presidential candidates coming through our States, across our country, during this year, this Presidential year, we can impact this policy.

Both political parties should have in their platforms this year that they will be writing come this summer that the Keep Our Pension Promises Act should be passed, that we should take care of these retirees and not permit them to lose the earned benefits that they spent their lives devoted to and now, in their later years, are facing these draconian cuts.

It is so wrong. I ask for justice for these American workers. Let's do what is right for them. And I know the people listening tonight agree, and they would do the same thing if they were standing down here on this floor with me.

Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for allowing me to speak out this evening and to stand alongside the hardworking men and women of our country. They deserve better treatment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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