[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 68 (Thursday, May 23, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4788-S4789]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          RETIREMENT SECURITY

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Briefly, what I want to do is summarize these four 
points.
  Retirement security is an issue that is of great concern to virtually 
all Americans. I believe there are four essential issues embedded in it 
which we need to begin dealing with in this Congress.
  There has not been much interest on the part of the administration in 
dealing with these issues. If there has been, I missed it. But I 
believe Congress needs to take the initiative to begin dealing with it. 
The four issues I believe deserve the greatest attention are:
  First of all, We need to recognize that everyone who works in this 
country ought to be entitled to a pension of some sort--a pension, a 
401(k), some kind of provision for their retirement in addition to 
Social Security. I think that should be a goal to which we should all 
agree.
  Second, all workers should have a right to secure retirement savings. 
We should eliminate the problems of mismanagement of people's 
retirement savings that we saw in the case of Enron. Senator Kennedy 
has put together legislation we have reported out of the HELP Committee 
that tries to close some of those loopholes, eliminate some of those 
abuses, and deal with the looting of retirement savings that 
unfortunately has occurred and is permitted under current law.
  Third, all workers must have pension portability. This is a difficult 
issue but an important one. Most workers will have somewhere between 10 
and 15 jobs during their career. That is the way of the modern economy. 
We need to be sure they can move their pension from job to job and not 
lose their pension benefits because they are forced to change jobs in 
midcareer.
  Fourth, all workers should have retirement benefits comparable to 
those of the highest paid executives in the company. We cannot have one 
set of rules for the top management and a different set of rules for 
the rest of the people in the employ of that corporation. We need to 
have comparable tax provisions so there is not a set of tax provisions 
that allows for the putting away of postretirement income for the top 
executives of the company while the average worker of the company is 
denied a reasonable pension.
  Last week I came to the floor to talk about our Nation's gap in 
pension and retirement plan coverage.
  Although Enron has been the focus of much of our attention, we cannot 
ignore the disturbing trend that pension coverage in our country has 
not budged from roughly 50 percent coverage over the past 30 years. 
Minorities, particularly Hispanics, fare significantly worse with 73 
percent of all Hispanics in the private sector not having a retirement 
or pension plan. Quite simply, we must do more.
  In light of Enron and other corporate abuses, it is patently evident 
that we must strengthen our retirement and pension laws so that 
employees' retirement savings are given real protections. We must 
protect the retirement savings of our workers from unscrupulous 
executives who are willing to use their positions to enrich themselves 
at the expense of the employees. We must also be sure that employees 
are protected from various conflicts of interest that allow 
accountants, analysts, and employers to act in their own self-interest 
and financial well being instead of the best interests of the 
employees. In particular, we must be sure that we do not change the law 
to expose employees to new conflicts of interest, as would occur if we 
allowed conflicted investment advisers to invade the secure world of 
ERISA protected retirement plans. Of course, all of these protections 
don't mean much if employees do not have the ability to diversify out 
of employer securities so that they are not financially ruined when 
there is an economic downturn or their employer goes out of business. 
Sadly, the House-passed bill does not provide any of these protections 
in any meaningful way.
  Although we have made great strides in the past several years, we 
still have more to do to be sure workers with traditional pension plans 
are able to take their savings with them when they move on to a new 
job. While retirement plans are more portable than traditional 
pensions, we must still make sure that employees have the right to take 
what is theirs with them if they change employment. In these cases, 
plan portability is not the only issue, concerns over vesting and the 
ability to diversify out of employer stock are equally important.
  Finally, we need to ensure that executives of companies do not walk 
away from a business with millions in benefits when the employees are 
sent home with a retirement account full of worthless employer stock. 
It is fair that executives have more money in their retirement 
accounts--that is one of the benefits of being a higher salaried 
employee. What isn't fair, though,

[[Page S4789]]

is when executives have millions in deferred compensation and other 
executive benefits that have been funded by tax-preferenced vehicles 
like corporate owned life insurance none of which is available to the 
workers. If a benefit does not meet non-discrimination rules, it is 
unclear to me why a company should be able to be fund these executive 
benefits through tax-preferred chicanery.
  As we move into the 21st century it is important that we take note of 
the state of our private retirement system and work to improve it. Too 
many Americans still do not have any pension or retirement coverage. 
That must improve. We must also strengthen our retirement system to 
provide employees with real protections for their retirement savings--
not symbolic changes as proposed by the House and Administration. We 
must provide our workers with increased pension portability and true 
ownership of all their retirement assets. Finally, we must change our 
laws so that companies are not able to take advantage of loopholes in 
the Tax Code that give them significant tax relief when funding 
executive retirement benefits that are not available to the workers. We 
will need much than proposed by the administration and passed by the 
House if we want a world where ``what's fair on the top floor should be 
fair on the shop floor.'' I hope my colleagues from across the aisle 
are ready to match legislation with their rhetoric. If not, 
unfortunately, this Congress will come to a close with workers once 
again getting the short end of the bargain.
  These are very important issues. When we return after this week-long 
recess, I hope we can put some serious effort into dealing with them. I 
commit to proposing some legislation to try to help move us in that 
direction.
  My time has expired, so I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.

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