Pensions

Floor Speech

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Mr. BROWN. Madam President, another Congress is ending, a President's term is coming to a close, and, yet again, this Senate, the President, Washington have failed to address the pension crisis facing far too many workers.

The American people are tired of waiting for us to do our jobs, and they are tired of being told by Leader McConnell and President Trump: You are on your own.

The House has twice passed legislation that would address the multiemployer pension crisis, but under Leader McConnell the Senate has failed these Americans. As for the White House, I don't even think President Trump knows, much less cares, about the multiemployer pension crisis.

We ought to be working to support all the workers and retirees around the country whose lives have been upended during this pandemic, and that should include more than a million Americans in multiemployer pension system. After a lifetime of hard work and service to our country, they have already waited too long for Congress to do its job and to protect the benefits that these workers earned through a lifetime of work.

We have been trying to solve this crisis for years. The House has done its part. They passed the solution multiple times now. Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Senate, is deliberately blocking it, and his party and his Members and the President support him in blocking it.

Senate Republicans said this week that after a year of negotiating and talking to stakeholders, they made substantial progress toward a common ground, but then they released legislation that walked back all the progress that we had made. It is a betrayal of the people whom we serve.

This pension crisis affects retirees across the country of all political parties. Unions, chambers of commerce, and small businesses pretty much all agree that we need to get this done. Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell doesn't.

There is no excuse for Senate Republicans standing in the way of a deal. This only gets more expensive the longer we wait. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to solve this. We waited year after year after year while Senator McConnell has simply twiddled his thumbs.

The public health crisis and the economic crisis we are facing right now are not happening in a vacuum. The damage caused by the pandemic and the President's failures is layered on top of all the existing problems in our country, including the crisis facing these workers and retirees who are in danger of losing the retirement security that they earned. I always emphasize ``that they earned.''

These pension plans were already in danger. Now the economic emergency we are in has put them in a worse position. We are talking about retirees who did everything right. They spent years working on assembly lines, bagging groceries, driving trucks, working construction--working hard to keep our economy going. Money came out of every single one of their paychecks to earn these pensions.

People in this town don't understand the collective bargaining process. People give up dollars today at the bargaining table for the promise of a secure retirement with good healthcare and a pension. Think about that. These workers are sitting around a table with their representatives, bargaining, collectively bargaining with management, saying: OK, we will take a smaller salary. We will take a smaller hourly wage today so that money will go into pensions and healthcare.

Yet because this Senate won't act, because Senator McConnell never calls us together to do this--to take care of workers--these workers are losing parts of their pension.

This crisis in my State affects thousands of people. It affects the massive Central States Pension Plan, the Bricklayers Local 7, the Iron Workers Local 17, the Ohio Southwest Carpenters Pension Plan, the Bakers and Confectioners Pension Plan, and on and on and on and on.

It touches every single State from Mississippi to Ohio, from Massachusetts to California--every State in this country. We are talking about our entire multiemployer pension system. If it collapses, it won't just be retirees who will feel the pain. Current workers will be stuck paying into pensions they will never receive.

Small businesses will be left drowning in pension liabilities they can't afford to pay--small businesses that have been in the family for generations. And there are a number of them in Ohio, businesses that people in this body will have heard of that make products they use. Small businesses and family businesses could face bankruptcy. Workers will lose jobs as businesses are forced to close up shop.

The effects will ripple across the entire country at a time when we can least afford it. We knew before the pandemic that this system could collapse. It is more likely to fail now. That is why the Senate must act.

We know who will get hurt the most if the system collapses. It is not Wall Street. It is never Wall Street when it comes to Senator McConnell. It is never Wall Street that gets hurt. It is small businesses. It is their employees. It is the people who make this country work. Their lives, their livelihoods will be devastated if Congress fails again.

Workers and retirees in Ohio and around the country have rallied in the name of Butch Lewis, a great Ohioan who helped lead this fight, who passed away far too soon fighting for his fellow workers. His widow, Rita, has become my friend. She has continued this fight. She has become a leader and an inspiration to so many of us.

I brought her to the State of the Union twice. She has made the trip here over and over, along with so many workers and retirees. They travel all day and night on buses. They have rallied in the bitter cold of the winter and in hot DC summers. Their government, their majority leader, their President refuse to listen and turn their backs.

Rita once told me that retirees and workers struggling with this crisis feel like they are invisible. They feel like they are invisible. To far too many people in Washington, they are invisible. They are not invisible to me. They are not invisible to Speaker Pelosi or Leader Schumer or Senator Smith or Senator Peters or Chairman Neal or Chairman Scott--all of whom have joined with me on fighting for this--and to so many colleagues who worked for years now trying to find a bipartisan solution. We won't give up until these retirees' benefits are protected.

It comes back to the dignity of work. When work has dignity, we honor the security--the retirement security--that people earned--again, sitting down at the bargaining table. Workers give up wages today to put money aside, matched by employers, generally, for the future, for this retirement.

They made the right decision back then, but we are not making the right decision right now as their pensions are in trouble. I urge my colleagues in this body--colleagues with healthcare and retirement plans paid for by taxpayers, all of us who are in this body--to think about these retired workers and the stress they are facing.

Join us. Let's pass a solution that honors their work. Let's honor their work. Let's honor the dignity of work. Let's keep our promise to them.

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