[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 165 (Monday, December 3, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12282-S12283]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          RAILROAD RETIREMENT

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I want to speak for a few minutes on the 
main legislation that is pending before the Senate, the Railroad 
Retirement and Survivors Act of 2001. The procedures that we follow in 
the Senate sometimes obfuscate or make it impossible to determine 
exactly what it is we are debating. We have so many different issues 
that we are debating all at the same time. I wanted to bring the focus 
of the Senate back for a minute to the main issue that we should be 
debating, and that is the pending railroad retirement legislation.
  There is an amendment that has been offered to the railroad 
retirement legislation by Senator Lott, and it involves an effort to 
pass the House-passed energy bill, H.R. 4, and also an effort to have 
the Senate on record on the issue of so-called therapeutic cloning. 
Someone might ask, How do therapeutic cloning and an energy bill relate 
to each other, and how do those two items happen to be related to 
railroad retirement?
  Well, there is no relationship. Essentially, what we are going to 
decide shortly after 5 o'clock is, Are we in fact going to pursue 
passage of this railroad retirement bill and keep these extraneous 
matters to the side so they can be dealt with under different 
circumstances, with full debate, later in this Congress, or are we 
going to get sidetracked and essentially get off track on dealing with 
railroad retirement?
  It is very important, in my view, that we deal with railroad 
retirement. This is the opportunity, this is the chance we have. There 
are 74 cosponsors. I know that has been mentioned several times on the 
floor. I am one of those cosponsors. This legislation did pass the 
House of Representatives by 384 votes in favor, 33 against. While 
clearly I respect the rights of colleagues to express the concerns and 
interests of other Senators in bringing other matters forward, I think 
it is high time we went ahead and passed this bill and sent it to the 
President. A great deal has changed since we began providing benefits 
to railroad employees back in the 1930s. We have tried to update this 
retirement system to reflect some of the changes in the cost of living 
and lifespans of former employees and their spouses.
  Several years ago, Congress told the railroad companies and the 
unions to sit down and work out their differences on this legislation 
so that we could get a set of proposals that Congress could consider.
  This bill--the railroad retirement bill before us today--is the 
product of those negotiations. It deserves our attention and our 
support. The country owes a great deal of the growth and dominance we 
have had in the industrial and agricultural sectors to the railroad 
industry and to the employees of that industry. We need to be sure that 
these men and women receive retirement and disability benefits to 
reflect what they have accomplished, what they have done for this 
country.
  This legislation tries to allow those employees with 30 years of 
employment in the industry to retire at age 60 without a reduction of 
their benefits. It would also provide the surviving spouse of a 
railroad worker with a benefit that appreciates the cost of maintaining 
a household and is not cut in half when the first spouse dies. Under 
current law, a widow or widower receives half of their tier 2 annuity, 
which, in most cases, will not be enough to pay for the basic 
necessities of life.
  This legislation also allows current railroad employees to have their 
retirement benefits vested after 5 years rather than after 10 years, 
which is the current law.
  Finally, the legislation repeals the maximum benefit ceiling that is 
currently in place and allows the amount of benefit to be based solely 
on the existing formula of the highest 2 years of income over the past 
10 years.
  These are reasonable changes, they are fair changes. I believe very 
strongly we should in these final days of this first session of the 
107th Congress pass this bill. We should send it to the President for 
his signature, and we should resist the efforts we are seeing in this 
Chamber today to bog this down by attaching other very controversial 
legislation by the amendment process.
  I hope cloture will be invoked on the amendment that Senator Lott has 
offered and that it can be withdrawn. We can then proceed to vote on 
the railroad retirement bill and pass it and have that one piece of 
very constructive legislation sent to the President before the week is 
out.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DAYTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page S12283]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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