[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 47 (Tuesday, March 14, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3121-H3123]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1830
     RENEWAL OF REQUEST FOR PERMISSION FOR CERTAIN COMMITTEES AND 
       SUBCOMMITTEES TO SIT ON TOMORROW DURING THE 5-MINUTE RULE

  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the following 
committees and subcommittees be able to sit during the 5-minute rule 
tomorrow: Committee on Banking and Financial Services, Committee on 
Commerce, Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, 
Committee 
[[Page H3122]] on Government Reform and Oversight, Committee on House 
Oversight, Committee on International Relations, Committee on the 
Judiciary, Committee on National Security, and Committee on Resources.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shays). Is there objection to the 
request of the gentleman from Pennsylvania?
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the right to object.
  Mr. Speaker, as I was saying when this matter was previously brought 
up, I am not going to object, but I do want to make the point, and I 
think it is a point that bears consideration.
  This is a very serious matter that is going to be considered by the 
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight tomorrow. It is a matter 
of great controversy. Now we have considered a lot of matters of great 
controversy when we have been under the 5-minute rule. My side has 
agreed to this, and I am not going to object because of that. The 
leadership on my side has consulted with their leadership and has 
agreed.
  However, Mr. Speaker, I want to make the point under my reservation 
that this is a change of great magnitude for middle-income workers, 
that we expect to carry out our policies. The proposal is approximately 
a 10-percent tax increase. Now, if it were on any other people in 
America, the committee would not only not meet, they would be 
vigorously opposed to such an action. I am told that the proposal will 
be changed somewhat and that, in fact, the money will not be a savings, 
but will be applied to the retirement itself of Federal employees. But 
it has been projected at an $11 to $12 billion cut out of the pension 
benefits of some 2 million civilian Federal employees. That is a big 
hit on Federal employees. I am opposing that proposal, and will oppose 
it tomorrow, and am hopeful that it will not be approved.
  Now the ranking member of the subcommittee from which that came is 
the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran]. He has raised many reasons why 
it should not be approved, and at this time, under my reservation of 
objection, I will be glad to yield to the gentleman from Virginia.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. 
Hoyer].
  The reason why we have reserved the right to object is that we are 
marking up a bill that has been given very little consideration. The 
minority had been notified only days in advance of a markup and, in 
fact, of hearings. We are rushing to judgment on a retirement system 
that, in fact, does not need tampering with, that, in fact, was fixed 
in 1986 after 2 full years of deliberation, and now we are going to 
change that within a matter of days with very little reflection.
  Most of the Members of this House have no idea what we will be 
marking up tomorrow and bringing to the floor very shortly. What we did 
in a bipartisan way, after 2 years of study in 1986, was to institute a 
new retirement system. That retirement system is working perfectly. It 
is fully funded. The old retirement system is not fully funded, but in 
fact it is being phased out. So there is no reason to mess with that, 
and, when we passed legislation in 1986, we told Federal employees, we 
told our colleagues, we told the American public, we were not going to 
change this system, and now we are asking for unanimous consent to mark 
up a bill that completely changes it in a radical and punitive manner.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, we did this in 1986. Was the gentleman 
here in 1986?
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, I was not here, and the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Cunningham] was not here.
  I would tell the gentleman from San Diego and I would emphasize that 
we have a responsibility to maintain the contracts that we make with 
the American people, that this Congress does. We are standing in the 
seat and assuming the responsibilities of our predecessors, and, when 
the U.S. Congress makes contractual obligations, it is our 
responsibility to fulfill those obligations. I am glad that the 
gentleman from California made that point, made the point that we have 
a responsibility to fulfill our commitments, and we are going to 
abdicate that responsibility and violate that commitment in the markup 
tomorrow. At least that is the intent of getting unanimous consent to 
be able to meet during the legislative session. That is why we have 
brought up this reservation.
  Granted, it applies to Members of Congress; that is not the reason 
for the objection. Members of Congress will pay more into their 
retirement, and they will get much less back out of their retirement. 
But the people that are taking the biggest hit are Federal employees 
who will pay almost a 12-percent tax increase in the CSRS plan. It will 
go from 7 to 9\1/2\ percent and, in the new plan, from 0.8 to 3.3 
percent after we assured them this would not happen.
  That is why this should be objected to, and I yield back to the 
gentleman who yielded to me, the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer].
  Mr. HOYER. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from 
California [Mr. Cunningham] asked the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. 
Moran] whether he was here. He, of course, perhaps knew, or at least 
may have known, that the gentleman from Virginia was not here.
  As the gentleman well knows, I was here, and I would tell my friend 
from California that this was a bill that was passed by the Democrat 
House, by the Republican Senate, and signed by President Reagan. This 
was an attempt to put, as my friend from Virginia has said, the pension 
system on a sound basis. As the gentleman from California clearly 
knows, President Reagan, his OPM director, OMB and the Republicans in 
the U.S. Senate, then headed by Mr. Dole, as he is now heading that 
Senate, as the gentleman knows, made a determination that it needed to 
be changed, so we created the FERS system, which is for new employees 
and new Members of Congress, and we kept in place the Civil Service 
Retirement System. As the gentleman from Virginia has pointed out, that 
was a bipartisan fix of a pension system.
  It created two systems, a new system, and left in place the old 
system. It did not deal, as I know my friend knows, with the military 
retirement system, and I would presume that my friend would not want us 
to arbitrarily and capriciously, with very short consideration, change 
the military retirement system, and the reason we should not do that is 
we have a moral obligation to our friends who served in the military, 
who served their country, and under one consideration, they did not do 
it for this reason, but we told our friends in the military, ``This is 
the deal, this is the pension system that we're going to give you,'' 
and I am going to yield to the gentleman in just a second, but I was 
intrigued with my friend's question, so I wanted to fully respond.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I agree, and I do not disagree totally with what the 
gentleman is doing. My only intent was the gentleman was sounding like 
he helped create the bill. He, nor I, was there, and that is the only 
issue I brought.
  Mr. HOYER. The gentleman makes a point, neither of them were there.
  The point I want to make in all seriousness, and we are almost ready, 
but, further reserving my right to object, the point I want to make is 
that this is a very serious proposal which will adversely affect 
middle-class working Americans, and I have a lot of good friends on 
their side of the aisle with whom I agree some of the time, but very 
frankly this is not a partisan issue in terms of those who are being 
focused on it. The gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis], the gentlewoman 
from Maryland [Mrs. Morella], and, as the gentleman mentioned, others 
share our concerns that we not in a short term, without serious 
consideration, without extended debate in the subcommittee or in full 
committee, without an opportunity for persons to be heard who will be 
adversely affected, impose on middle-class working Americans in effect 
a 10- to 12-percent tax increase.
  Now we do it by increasing their pension from 7 to 9\1/2\ points. 
That is a 2\1/2\ point--about $750--$750 on the average 
[[Page H3123]] Federal worker, and that is akin to about a 10-percent 
tax increase. That is something we ought not to do in the fashion that 
we are doing it. That is the purpose of us rising.
  Mr. Speaker, we are not going to object because there has been an 
agreement, and very frankly we understand, even if we objected, they 
could make a motion tomorrow to do the same thing, and I am convinced 
they would prevail, but I hope we look at this matter very closely. My 
friend from California said he may agree with me if we affected 
military retirement in this fashion. We would not want to do that. I 
say to my colleagues, don't do it to civil service employees any more 
than you would do it to military personnel in this fashion.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOYER. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.
  Mr. MORAN. Mr. Speaker, just as the gentleman from Pennsylvania who 
asked unanimous consent request, I ask that the Members of Congress 
realize what this means to them or, more importantly, to their staffs, 
in fact to all the committees' staffs, all the people who work up here 
on the Hill. They will see their retirement contribution requirement 
increased by about 12 percent, from 8 to 9\1/2\ percent. On the base 
that is about a 12-percent increase. They will see their accumulated 
retirement reduced by 2 percent. So we hit them on the front end in 
terms of what they contribute and on the back end in terms of what they 
are able to accumulate toward their retirement, but when we compare 
that to Federal employees, there was actually a 35-percent increase. 
That is 2\1/2\ percent over the current base of 7 percent, a 35-percent 
increase over what they are currently paying, plus there will be a 
reduction in what they are able to receive.
  And in the Thrift Savings Plan, which was designed to fix this, which 
we were committed to sustaining and to not changing, there will be a 
reduction in the employer contribution, the Federal Government's 
contribution, from 5 down to 3 percent. This will affect the quality of 
life is everyone in the Federal Government who is dependent upon a 
Federal retirement, whether it is in the legislative branch, or the 
executive branch, or the judiciary branch.
  This is a profound change in the assumptions that people have made 
when they seek and obtain Federal employment and when they plan their 
retirement years, and yet we get unanimous consent to mark up a bill 
with a few days notice, and bring it to the floor and make such a 
profound change with very little consideration.
  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and just in closing:
  We ought to remember approximately 90 percent of private sector 
employees in America make no contribution to their retirement systems, 
none. Federal employees are now making a 7-percent contribution. Now, 
the Federal employee pension system is a better system than most 
private sector pension systems. I mentioned that Ronald Reagan signed 
the bill in which we formed this working with a Republican Senate and a 
Democrat House.

                              {time}  1845

  In 1990, A Democratic Senate and a Democratic House, working with a 
Republic President, George Bush, tried to reform and did reform the pay 
system. And the reason President Bush and his administration agreed to 
that was because they believed, correctly, that pay was not comparable, 
and they further believed that you ought not to modify in any way the 
pension system until you got pay comparable.
  President Bush then signed the locality bill, the Federal 
Comparability Pay Act, and said in signing that that he hoped to put 
the pay and retirement system on a solid base. That is our point. We 
ought to retain what we have. We ought not to change it and we ought 
not to do it in this way.
  But, again, as I said, Mr. Speaker, I will not object because of the 
fact that my leadership has agreed to this process.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shays). Is there objection to the 
request of the gentleman from Pennsylvania?
  There was no objection.
  

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