Pension Protection Act of 2005

PENSION PROTECTION ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - December 15, 2005)

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Mr. RANGEL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

My colleagues, I do not know how the majority gets away with what they do. I do not think that their legislative initiatives are just for the legislation, but rather to do away with traditions that have existed under Democrat administrations.

If you have an immigration problem, lock up the immigrants and lock up the employers. If you have a health problem, then get rid of Medicaid and Medicare and let the private sector resolve the problems. If you have a prescription drug problem and you want to subsidize that and help out the older people, do not let the Federal Government do it. Give the money to the private sector; let them compete and let them do it. The Social Security system, if people have relied on their government when they get older or disabled, do not let the government be involved. Get some private accounts and let them do it.

Now we are talking about how well the economy is doing: plants are closing; people are fearful of losing their jobs; pension plans are going busted; and, really, people do not feel nearly as good as the Republicans and the President think.

Now we have a bill before us where these pension plans would be a heck of a lot better if we did nothing, rather than do the harm that we are about to do to them. The demands that are going to be made on employers to reach sometimes the increase of 240 percent in making contributions to these plans will cause many of them to drop the plan and go into bankruptcy. The whole idea of how much revenue we are going to lose, some $70 billion, is not even an issue, if at the end of the day enough sweetheart nips and tucks were given to a handful of people so that we would be assured that the days of defined benefit pensions are just about over.

Some people will have to make political choices today in terms of support of this because there are some vested interest people that need short-gain satisfaction. But at the end of the day, the same way people regret their votes for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, they will have to come back and ask did they do more damage than good on today. If you look at actuaries and people who have studied this, they realize that so few pensions are now protected by the PBGC, and in the future many less will be protected.

So, Madam Speaker, these bills are not brought up just to become law. Many of the bills that are coming to this floor are brought to see which people are going to vote against the title of the bill and pay a price for that at the polls, or whether some are secure enough to vote against the substance of the bill that in the long term is going to adversely affect our workers.

At this time with the House permission, I would like to turn the balance of my time over to Congressman Ben Cardin from Maryland who has spent a lot of time on pensions and can share with the House the pitfalls that we have in this bill before the House today.

I yield the balance of my time to Congressman Cardin.

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