Congressional Record, Volume 148 Issue 123 (Wednesday, September 25, 2002)

[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 123 (Wednesday, September 25, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H6670-H6677]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

{time} 1745

However, the Senate has not passed pension security reform. Will we
allow yet another corporate scandal to hurt even more families before
we get a bill to the President's desk?
National security is critical today. Economic security is vital
today. Retirement security should be a top priority and must be passed
before we leave this session. It is crucial legislation that will
reform our country's outdated pension laws. It prevents corporate
insiders from selling their own stock during blackouts, and it gives
workers freedom to diversify their portfolios.
Mr. Speaker, the House has done its duty. We passed this much-needed
reform 5 months ago. While the President waits, the opportunity to sign
this bill sits motionless, collecting dust. The time to act is now.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to
the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis).
Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the gentleman who just spoke
realizes that his own constituents in his State lost $1.48 billion of
his constituents' hard-earned dollars there. So I just want to remind
him also of the scandal that has taken place here today.
Mr. Speaker, I rise here today because the rank and file workers,
many of whom that I represent and many that Members here represent know
and expect Congress to do something about this corruption that has been
going on now for some time and not continue with this whole issue of
safeguarding the lives of individuals that make seven-figure pensions,
get special perks, and will get more protections under this Republican-
sponsored piece of legislation.
As my colleagues know, this country lost over $175 billion in
retirement savings, and in California alone we lost 18 billion. I would
like to remind people that in our own districts right now we are faced
with some very hard issues. Our economy is hurting. Nationally
Hispanics right now have one of the highest rates of unemployment, 7.5
nationally, and in my own district in California in cities that I
represent it is way above 11 percent and it has been there for 6 months
or more.
How do I explain when I go home to my constituents that we are
ignoring the jobs about putting bad CEOs behind bars and letting them
go scot free? We cannot allow this version, the Republican-sponsored
legislation, to get out because people are watching. Americans want to
know that there is justice for all.
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from
Georgia (Mr. Isakson), a member of the committee.
Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me this
time, and I thank the chairman for the hearing he called immediately
following the revelations about Enron, a meeting that so far everybody
that has spoken was in attendance, a meeting that a gentleman spoke at
who was an employee of Enron. The real scandal is not a bunch of
statistics where somebody tries to divert attention. The scandal is
that on that day that committee where everybody that has spoken so far
attended heard a man, an employee at Enron, who had $751,000 in his
401(k) in January and had nothing by the time we had that hearing. And
at the same hearing the administrator and a trustee of that plan who
testified admitted that her plan had gone down by only 10 percent and
the difference was she had information and she could diversify. And
when that gentleman, an employee of Enron, was asked about the
information he received from his executives, he said the only thing
they were sent was the value of the increase of Enron stock.
We can talk about all the scandals we want to, but the biggest
scandal of all would be a failure of this Congress, in a year of
trepidation and economic tragedy, to not see to it that the rank and
file Americans we represent have a right to good information, the right
to hold the administrators accountable, and the right to diversify
their accounts. So rather than point to obscure statistics about what
may have happened in a State and trying to attribute it to an
individual who speaks, let us speak unitedly as we did in bipartisan
effort just months ago and let us pass a bill that brings about the
kind of reform to put to an end the kind of tragedies that took place
at Enron just a short time ago. Do not divert the debate. Help the
American worker and the citizens we represent.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to
the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney), a member of the
committee.

[[Page H6671]]

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I suppose that the gentleman who just spoke
up understands that the constituents in his State have lost about $5.25
billion of their hard-earned nest egg due to a poor economy, corporate
scandal, and weak pension laws, and in fact, what is amazing is all of
the things that he talked about at that hearing were true. That was
what the hearing told us. Nothing in the bill that passed this House
would address any of those issues. That poor employee still would never
have gotten information from the employer, from the CEOs and the other
high corporate officers saying that they had bailed out on their stock
and left the employees holding the bag. The bill that passed the House
does not resolve that. Nothing puts those people on the board of
directors so that they can be aware of situations like that and help
them.
The fact of the matter is once again we are here in this House
talking about a sense of the House, which makes no sense because it
does not do anything. We are instructing the other body on how to do
its business instead of doing our business. Do we want to help people
in this country? What they need is an extension of their unemployment
benefits. They are out. But we are not talking that action. We are
talking about a sense of the House resolution.
Let us talk about people who do not have health insurance. There are
almost 40 million of them now. We are not doing anything on that. Let
us talk about education. We have a ``no child left behind'' bill that
the President ran around the country touting, but he is afraid to have
the majority bring it up in the House because we are $7 billion short
on it. And that is money to help people get their children an
opportunity in the future.
We could be talking about job training for people that need to get
back into work, except the budget put forward by the majority and the
administration, cuts those funds way back so that people that are
displaced cannot have the resources they need to move forward.
The fact of the matter is this economy continues to struggle.
Families across America watch helplessly while their retirement savings
dwindle because of corporate greed. We watch their health care costs
rise. Small businesses cannot meet those, and yet there is no help
going out in that direction because we are not dealing with any
business of import to American families in the House. We are dealing
with senses of the House, senses of Congress, telling the other body of
the Congress what it should be doing.
The fact of the matter is, Mr. Speaker, there is much we could be
doing, much that we should be doing. I say let us get down to business
and let us do it.
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from
Illinois (Mrs. Biggert), a member of committee.
Mrs. BIGGERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of House Resolution 540.
Throughout the Nation employers pay good money to provide an excellent
benefit to their employees' 401(k) plans run by professionals, and yet
our 27-year-old law effectively silences those professionals, denying
employees a major part of the benefit their employers want them to
have. Now more than ever the 42 million Americans investing their
retirement income in 401(k) plans need access to critical investment
advice that will help them achieve their financial goals.
Retirement security and investment advice legislation has passed by a
bipartisan vote in the House, not once but twice during this Congress.
What I like best about this bill that we have passed is it gives
workers more freedom to diversify their retirement savings. American
workers need relief and they deserve it now. Let us get our pension
reform legislation to the President's desk before Congress adjourns
this year.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to
the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey), a member of the
subcommittee.
Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the gentlewoman who just spoke
realizes that constituents in her State have lost $8.66 billion, the
fourth highest amount in the Nation, of their hard earned nest egg due
to a poor economy, corporate scandal and weak pension laws.
Here we are after that, it is the last full week in September and the
House has passed only five of 13 appropriations bills, and yet we are
taking precious time to debate a meaningless resolution urging the
Senate to pass a pension reform bill.
Do I want the Senate to pass pension reform? I sure do. But rather
than wasting our time worrying about the Senate, I call on the majority
party to pass a real pension reform bill here in our House because we
have not done that yet.
Unlike the House passed pension bill, a real pension reform bill will
make pension fairness its number one highest priority. The House passed
pension bill not only fails to correct the pension inequities in
current law which favors corporate executives over employees, it
actually makes them worse. The House passed bill continues to allow
executives to sell the stock that they receive in stock options at any
time they choose, while it blocks their employees from selling company
provided stock for 5 years.
The House passed pension bill will continue to allow executives to
dump their own company stock without notifying their employees. In
fact, under the House passed bill executives can actually encourage
employees to continue to buy company stock just as they did at Enron,
where thousands of employees lost significant amounts of their
pensions. And an even bigger step backwards is that the House passed
bill gives an unfair share of benefits to top executives, resulting in
fewer pensions for lower wage workers.
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority whip.
Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I could say that all the issues that the gentlewoman was
talking about could be taken care of in conference committee if we
could get a bill from the Senate and go to conference and work some of
these out. The reason that we are here today is very important. We do
not have a conference committee, and we do not have a bill that we can
work on and work these problems out.
Members will vote today to reaffirm the House's commitment to protect
workers' pensions and their 401(k) plans. Employees who watch renegade
corporate officers raid their pensions want President Bush to be able
to sign a piece of legislation to protect their retirement funds from
future attacks.
Now, back in March the President told Congress to send him some
common sense reforms and on April 11 this House answered his call. This
House passed the bipartisan Pension Security Act. These powerful
protections attracted support from 46 Democrats. They joined the
Republican House majority because our pension protections were needed
and they are necessary. Members of both parties came together because
workers 401(k)s and pensions were in jeopardy and that had to
change. Specifically, the House pension protection package gives clear
new diversification rights to employees.

Now they are vested in only 3 years. Now they can diversify out of
company stock. Now they have multiple investment options that are
provided to the employees, and now they have more than their employer
stock. We strengthened notice rights so that employees will not get
caught off guard. We have placed strong restrictions on CEOs. We
blocked other executives from trading company stock when the employees
cannot trade their stock.
Mr. Speaker, the House passed a strong balanced pension security plan
months ago, but those potent new protections are not helping the
American people yet. The President is still waiting for the Pension
Securities Act to reach his desk. He says he will sign it as soon as it
comes. He has been waiting since April. Millions of worried Americans
are waiting for action on their retirement security. They should not
wait another week. There is no reason in the world to postpone action
on pension reform. Workers have watched for half the year as their
401(k)s and their pensions have been battered about by politics, and
despite the clear need for pension reform, the President continues to
wait, unable to sign the bill that the House passed in a big bipartisan
way.

[[Page H6672]]

So I just encourage our Members to support this resolution. Send a
very strong message to the American people. Let us demands action on
pension security. The Federal Government should put politics aside and
vote to protect workers 401(k)s and protect workers' pensions.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to
the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), a member of the committee.
(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I am sure the distinguished majority whip knows that the
people of Texas have lost $11.47 billion in their pension assets since
these scandals began, and I am pleased to hear him say that a
conference would be necessary to fix the problems in the bill that
passed the House in April.
He is right. There are a lot of problems, and one of those problems
is best understood if we thought about what would happen if the
majority's bill that had passed through this House were the law at the
time the Enron scandal came along.

{time} 1800

If Enron was working with a financial firm that was doing its
investment banking on the one hand and giving investment advice to its
pensioners in their 401(k) plan on the other hand, the majority's bill
would make it legal for that financial firm to give advice to employees
that would encourage them to buy Enron stock. We would have to wonder
whether that advice was based upon the wisdom of buying Enron stock and
filling up a pension 401(k) with it or whether it was based upon the
reward that that financial firm is earning as an investment banker in
the form of millions of dollars or tens of millions of dollars of fees
by representing Enron.
The scandal that has roiled the market, the scandal that has caused
the evaporation of $4.5 trillion of pension assets is all about
conflict of interest. The flaw in the bill that the majority passed out
of here 160 days ago is that it institutionalizes into the law conflict
of interest.
The chairman is right when he says that American workers need sound
investment advice, but he is incorrect when he says that this is the
kind of advice that they need. American workers need independent,
unbiased investment advice about where to put their money. The majority
assures them just the opposite, which is why this motion should be
defeated.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to
the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens).
(Mr. OWENS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the Republican majority has managed to move
the discussion off the table and stifle any discussions of the swindles
that have taken place. However, the hurt, the pain goes on with respect
to what has been endured by working families and hardworking employees
of corporations that swindle them out of their pension funds. To go
forward with the kind of ceremonial bill that was passed in this House
perpetuates that swindle.
We did not do anything significant. We did not deal with the
situation that exists in terms of they have lost their money and no one
has offered them ways to get it back, except I must pay tribute to the
gentleman from New York (Mr. Sweeney) and the AFL-CIO. Despite the fact
that Enron's employees were not unionized, several other corporations
were not unionized, they have gone to bat with them, and they have got
a settlement with them in the bankruptcy courts for some Enron
employees to get some of their money back.
We had an opportunity to be able to deal with correcting what the
Republican majority started when they took control. They wanted to
maximize deregulation from working conditions in the shops to the way
corporations handle pension funds and anything else. They wanted to
give the corporate bosses all the power they could give them and they
did that, but in hindsight, after seeing the debacle that had taken
place, we had hoped that there would be bipartisan cooperation, and
small steps like guaranteeing that there be a representative of the
employees on the pension committee were voted down by the committee,
and the bill that left this House did not have that, very tiny steps
like requiring that any executive who sold his stock would have to
notify the public right away. Use electronic notifications, that is
available now, that was voted down.
So we are in a ceremonial situation that should not go forward. We
would like real pension reform, and I hope that we have bipartisan
cooperation to get real pension reform.
Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the
remaining time.
I would urge the Members to vote no on this legislation because to
vote yes on this is to reaffirm the House to do nothing. The fact of
the matter is most of this legislation was written before the Enron
debacle. Most of this legislation was written because it was designed
for the purposes of increasing the contributions that people could make
to the 401(k) plans, allowing small businesses to make contributions;
to the owners, they would not have to offer pension plans at that point
because there is no need for them to take care of their employees,
treating executives differently than we treat employees. All of that
was already in this legislation.
Yes, we had a hearing on Enron and we listened to these employees who
were locked into their pension plans, could not sell their stock. This
legislation would have those same people, the people who were locked
into WorldCom, for whatever it is worth today, requires a 5-year phase-
out period and then it is 3 years. We would like to talk about how the
markets work and how fast they are and how they balance out. Those same
people are stuck there today, riding this out as the market dropped to
its lowest point in 6 years or in 4 years on the various indexes. They
cannot sell that corporate stock because they are locked in.
If this Congress really wanted to do something, just free those
millions of American workers so they could diversify today. They could
get out with what little they have left in their corporate stock.
The gentleman from Ohio, in his State they have lost $8 billion in
their 401(k)s. In California they lost $18 billion. He is right, those
are not abstract figures. That means someone is not going to retire
this year who planned on retiring. Somebody is not going to retire next
year. I assume my colleague had constituents come to him, like they
come up to me and told me how their retirement plans are shambles, how
one of the spouses is going to have to continue to work. They thought
he or she would be able to retire, how they now do not have the money
to put their kids through school.
Yet the Republican plan does not do anything for these people. It
does not let them out of these plans. It does not let them put workers
on the board. 100 percent of this money belongs to the workers. It is
their money. It is in their 401(k) plan, and they will not let them sit
on the pension board to discuss information about investments.
Finally, they say, well, we give them more investment advice. After
all we have learned out of Merrill Lynch, after we have learned out of
Citicorp, after all we learned about the huge conflicts of interest
about the investment banks and investment advice and touting these
stocks, all we have learned, this bill does not respond to it because
it allows those very same conflicts to continue. Wells Fargo now runs
an investment fund. Other companies are scouring the landscape to try
to buy these mutual funds because annuities are not doing so well.
Insurance businesses do not want to be in the business. I know in the
financial reform bill we had Chinese firewalls. They all broke down
during the nineties. Everybody was doing everybody else's business.
We owe it to the public to turn down this bill, and we have to
understand the reason the bill has not moved in the Senate is because
the Republicans will not accept any worker protections. Yes, they want
a bill just like this bill that takes care of corporate greed, takes
care of corporate criminality, does nothing for the worker. That is
unacceptable to the people in this country, and it should be
unacceptable

[[Page H6673]]

to their elected representatives in the House of Representatives.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The Chair would remind all
Members again, it is not appropriate to characterize the positions of
the Senate.
Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of our time.
Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day we need to send President Bush a
pension protection bill he can sign into law because this is about real
people and their own financial security, and the gentleman and my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle who talked all during this
debate about the amount of losses in pension accounts by State is
exactly the reason we have this resolution on the floor today.
The House passed pension protection legislation on April 11. We are
still waiting to send a bill to the President, and I would remind my
colleagues that this was a bipartisan bill, and I appreciate that my
colleagues may not agree with all the aspects of the bill, but 46
Democrats voted with all Republicans to move this bill to the other
body. Forty-six Democrats, almost one-fourth of the Democrat party in
the House, voted with all the Republicans to move this bill to the
other body to try to get it to the President's desk.
At the end of the day, this is about real people. It is about their
retirement security, and it is time that this Congress act and get this
bill to the President's desk before we leave here before the election.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of our time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. It is now in order to consider the debate
controlled by members of the Committee on Ways and Means. The gentleman
from Ohio (Mr. Portman) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui)
each will control 15 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman).
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I rise in strong support of the resolution before us. This is a
resolution to send a strong message that it is time to help all
American workers to save more for retirement and to be able to have
more security in their retirement. I commend the gentleman from
Mississippi (Mr. Pickering) for offering the resolution, and I am happy
to support him.
Mr. Speaker, today we are talking about doing the right thing. We are
talking about just following up on what this House did back in April to
be able to give people a little more security in their retirement. The
underlying legislation that we are encouraging the other body to act on
allows people who have retirement plans to have a lot more security in
a number of different ways.
First, very importantly, if they are in a 401(k) plan now and they
get a corporate match, as was the case with Enron, that company can tie
a person into that stock for a long period of time. At Enron it was age
50 plus having 10 years of service. Under the 401(k) rules as they
currently exist, a person could be tied down until they were age 65 or
indefinitely.
We say instead people, after they have vested and they vest after
only 3 years thanks to this House taking action last year to decrease
vesting from 5-years to 3 years, after only 3 years they can divest of
that stock. That is a big difference and it does make a difference. It
makes a difference to millions of workers around this country who have
401(k) plans, for 42 million people in that situation. Those who have
the good fortune of getting a match from their employer, and most of
them do, and those who get that in corporate stock now will have the
ability, the choice to be able to get out of that stock that the
workers at Enron did not have.
Second and very importantly, it provides a lot better information to
those same workers so that they are going to have the kind of data they
need to make a good decision, better information, including the fact
that when they get into a pension plan and get given a statement saying
this is what this plan is all about and they ought to diversify,
because commonly accepted investment principles for retirement says
people do not want all their eggs in one basket, they want to have
diversification. Companies now would have to say that in plain English
to employees as they get into these plans. That is good. That is an
improvement.
More important to me is that on a quarterly basis now a statement is
going to be given to all workers. It includes the value of their
assets, again their rights to diversify so they know they have those
rights, an explanation of generally accepted investment principles in
plain English. This is extremely important. It is not required now.
Finally, with regard to blackout periods, there was discussion
earlier about the fact that during a blackout period that executives
would be able to trade where employees would not who were in a 401(k)
plan, that is not true. That is changed in this legislation.
This legislation also says that with regard to a blackout period a
person has got to get 30 days notice. That was picked up in the
Corporate Accountability Act that actually already passed, but it came
out of this legislation out of the House.
There is additional fiduciary responsibilities that is in this
legislation that during a so-called blackout period; that is, when the
company changes advisers or something and has a blackout period on its
401(k) plan or other retirement plan, that people cannot trade in the
stock during that time period. There are additional fiduciary
responsibilities that go to the employer, to the executives. That is in
the legislation. These are all positive changes.
Finally, with regard to education, everybody who looks at our
retirement system today agrees that we not only need to allow people to
put more aside for retirement, we need to encourage people to be able
to do more for themselves and their families, but we also need to give
people more information and better education. This legislation says
that on a pretax basis a person gets a tax break basically for going
down and getting investment advice, up to $500. It is not inexpensive
to get investment advice. This is very important to people. They can
choose whoever they want. There is no potential conflict of interest
here because they can choose an adviser who is a third party who has
nothing to do with the company or its 401(k) plan.
Also, significantly, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) just
discussed, it also provides companies the option to be able to have
advisers come into the company and offer good, sound advice under a
fiduciary duty, that they have to not only provide good advice and
sound advice and objective advice but they have to be certified, they
have to be qualified to do so, and they have to disclose any kind of
potential conflict they might have with the company or its 401(k) plan.
This is, when we talk to people in the trenches, again, one of the
most important, single aspects of this legislation, which is to provide
workers with better education so they can make better decisions so
there is a nest egg there when they retire that will take care of
themselves and their families in retirement.
This is great legislation, and there is no better way to show that
than the fact that it has passed the House on a strong bipartisan
basis. Forty-six Democrats voted for it. It is now stuck in the other
body, and the President waits for it to come to his desk which he says
he will sign it. He will sign it immediately.
Today's exercise may be viewed by some as meaningless, but to us it
is simply a way of sending a strong message. Workers are waiting for
this relief. The Enron debacle happened about a year ago. In April the
House acted, and still we see no action on the other side of the
Capitol, in the other body, and therefore, we cannot help people to be
able to get all those rights we talked about earlier, these important
changes in retirement security.
There were a number of statements made earlier by some of my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle that I just do not get. They
talked about how this bill gives executives more perks. Name one. I
challenge my colleagues. Name one. I do not know what they are
referring to. They say it makes it worse because executives can divest
or sell when there is an employee blackout. Not so, and actually,
again, that is in current law now because it was part of this bill, but
then it got passed as part of the Corporate Accountability Act.

[[Page H6674]]

{time} 1815

I do not know what talking points the other side of the aisle is
referring to. But the bottom line is that this legislation was
bipartisan. It passed this House with a strong vote. It is entirely
focused on retirement security, helping people to be able to have more
security in their retirement accounts.
We are saying today that it is time to move this legislation from the
halls of Congress and from a lot of talk to action, and to be able to
actually help people in need, people who are looking at their
retirement accounts decrease 20 to 30 percent, and telling those people
help is on the way. This is one way to give Americans a more secure
retirement. It is good legislation, and I strongly urge its passage.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to myself.
Mr. Speaker, I am astonished. It is 6:15 in the evening; West Coast
time it is 3:15. We have been debating essentially this issue with the
rule and now in debate; and we will go on for another couple hours on
this, so we will have all of this staff time in the House of
Representatives and all of us sitting in the House of Representatives.
What this resolution does is just say that the Senate should pass the
Boehner-Thomas bill that was passed earlier this year. That is all it
does. It is a meaningless piece of legislation. It has no effect of
law. It is just gamesmanship.
I suppose the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman) actually might feel a
little more secure at night because this resolution will probably pass,
and it will make us feel better. Like, my gosh, we earned our pay
because we were on the floor debating an important issue.
Maybe the gentleman from Ohio feels a little better also because
people from the State of Ohio in their 401(k)s only lost $8 billion
over the last 18 months. My problem is California, these same people
that have 401(k)s, have lost $18 trillion. Maybe the intensity of the
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and my intensity is a
little greater than the intensity of the gentleman from Ohio because $8
billion is small time compared to what we lost in California.
But what is interesting is the way Members handle legislation is not
by passing resolutions and beating our chest and making a spectacle of
ourselves. We walk to the other body, 5 minutes away, and say to the
Senators, this bill has not passed. How can we get this piece of
legislation passed? They may raise some problems. They may say we
should beef the bill up a little bit. Then we could come back and start
talking. The reason nothing happens is because we keep beating our
chests and pretending like we are legislating when we really are not.
Many of us who are concerned about this, in the last 18 months since
President Bush took the oath of office, the stock market lost 40
percent. It went from 11,700 points down to 7,700 points. That is a lot
of money. That is trillions of dollars worth of losses.
My colleagues said when the President took office, we have to reform
Social Security; we are going to privatize Social Security. All of a
sudden privatization has become a bad word because people have lost
money in the stock market, so they abandon the discussion about Social
Security; but it will probably come up next year because the President
plans to privatize Social Security. That is why this election is
important.
We will not debate Social Security. We have four Republican bills out
there. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey) has one, the gentleman from
Florida (Mr. Shaw) has one. Why not bring those bills up on the
privatization of Social Security. Let us debate those so at least the
American public in an election year will know where we stand.
On prescription drugs, Republicans want to privatize Medicare and the
prescription drug program. That is why the other body has a very
difficult time with it because we want to put prescription drugs under
the Medicare program to make sure all seniors are protected.
So we have fundamental differences, but what is really sad is that
the Boehner-Thomas bill is irrelevant. We have some major problems in
America. People have lost their 401(k) plans. People are stuck with
their own company's plans, their stock in their 401(k)s. This bill will
do very little. I think the gentleman from California (Mr. George
Miller) said it is a 5-year transition before it really comes
effective. Then the so-called financial advice will come from the same
people that are managing the Enron-type pension plans. They are going
to say buy Enron stock or WorldCom stock because it is in their
company's best interests. They are getting their wages from the
company. That is why it is very difficult for the other body to get
excited about this.
Mr. Speaker, what we should be dealing with right now is
transparency. One of the real problems in the stock market and why
there is a great loss of confidence is because people know that the
books are not necessarily accurate. We saw that with the former CEO of
General Electric, Jack Welch. This guy has a corporate jet on call, he
had a penthouse in New York, tickets to sporting events. Millions and
millions of dollars' worth of money that was part of his going-away
present in perpetuity for the rest of his life. He was smart enough to
give it up because he knew the political ramifications.
I wish my colleagues would have the judgment of Jack Welch, and I
will tell Members why, not to punish corporate CEOs, but to provide
transparency. The American public when they invest in the market should
know exactly where that money is going. That means less stock dividends
that are being paid out. That is why this is important.
We would like to just offer a bill, or even an amendment; but under
the rules, the Republicans will not allow us to do it. But if in fact
there is a situation where we are going to give big fringe benefits to
many of these CEOs who are retiring, all it requires is letting the
shareholders of the company know what these benefits are, what the
value is; and secondly, letting the stockholders vote. What is wrong
with that? Why can we not debate that issue today and send it over to
the other body. I bet they would pass it quickly.
But the other side of the aisle does not want to do it quickly
because they have a lot of friends that they are helping. That is what
the problem is right now, and that is why this resolution is a waste of
time, and that is why we have already wasted 3\1/2\ hours, and we will
probably waste more time on nothing today. But we will go home, and we
will feel a little better and have a glass of wine and kind of enjoy
life.
But I will say that my constituents, maybe not the constituents of
the gentleman from Ohio, but my constituents, because they have lost
$18 trillion in their 401(k) plans, are really sad.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The Chair would remind
Members that characterizing why the Senate might be having difficulty
is also not in order under the rules.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from
Texas (Mr. Smith).
Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding
me this time.
Mr. Speaker, pension security is close to the heart of every working
American. Workers save for years with the hopes that after they retire
they will be able to live without financial worries, spending more time
with their family and friends.
Five months ago the House passed a pension reform bill with
significant bipartisan support. This legislation gives workers the
freedom to diversify their retirement savings, it expands worker access
to investment advice, empowers workers to hold company insiders
accountable for abuses, and gives workers added protections. The House
has acted on pension reform; the Senate has not. Yet Americans continue
to worry about their retirement security.
Mr. Speaker, Americans deserve a secure retirement. They expect it,
and they have earned it. I also want to add that I think the majority
whip a few minutes ago on the House floor, the gentleman from Texas
(Mr. DeLay), made an excellent point. He reminded us that while the
House has acted, the Senate has not. Under our system, unless we have a
work product from the House and a work product from the Senate that can
go to a conference

[[Page H6675]]

committee, we are not going to have pension reform. As much as we might
criticize what the House has done, it is too late to do anything about
it. Pension reform passed with bipartisan support in the House. The
only action left now is once the House has acted, under our system, the
Senate now needs to act, and we need to get that work product. The
House has acted; the Senate has not.
The other point, Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of sentiment
expressed tonight about the great need for pension reform and pension
security. I think we all agree with that, but we need to focus not on
what is wrong with the work product of one body, but we need to focus
on the solution. And once again, the only way we are going to get to
that solution is if we have a work product from the House and we have a
work product from the Senate. Unfortunately, the House has acted; but
the Senate has not. Until we get to the point where we can get to the
conference committee and resolve our differences and do what is right
for American workers and the American people, and for those who deserve
to have a secure retirement, we are not going to get to that solution.
Once again, the House has acted and the Senate has not. Until we come
up with a solution to that dilemma, which is going to be a conference
report after the House and the Senate have acted, we are not going to
do what is right for the American people.
Mr. Speaker, once again, the House has acted; the Senate has not. We
have to resolve that before we can do what is right.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from
California (Ms. Pelosi).
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this
time and for his leadership. I wonder if the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Smith) realizes that his constituents in the State of Texas have lost
$11.5 billion of their hard-earned nest eggs due to corporate scandal
and weak pension laws.
It is very interesting to see us gathered on this floor telling the
other body that it should pass legislation when we have been so
delinquent in this body in doing our own business. The other body has
passed a prescription drug benefit which we are trying to discharge
with a discharge petition. We should be taking up that prescription
drug benefit. The American people want and need it.
Not one single appropriations bill has become law even though the
fiscal year is less than 1 week away, October 1. The Republican
leadership has refused to schedule desperately needed bipartisan school
construction legislation.
That leadership has also failed to schedule legislation to help all
Americans with escalating prescription drug benefits, as I mentioned.
Now the Republican leadership has a new strategy, pass resolutions
praising old, irresponsible tax bills and blame the other body. The
resolution before us today is not only a press release, it is a very
misleading one.
Members can see what we need to do for education in our country and
how far short the Republican initiative on this comes, and that we are
taking no action to meet the needs of America's children. The
administration and the Republicans say Leave No Child Behind in their
rhetoric, but in reality their budget request leaves millions of
children behind by having a $7 billion deficit in what they are sending
to this floor.
Hopefully, some of the Republicans on the other side of the aisle
will prevail so we can do justice for our children. This is surreal.
This is not sense of the Congress; this is nonsense of the Congress.
Mr. Speaker, our Founding Fathers placed a value on life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. That pursuit of happiness included working
hard, playing by the rules, and being able to reach their self-
fulfillment and retirement with dignity, not to have to be dependent on
their children to support them; indeed, helping their children reach
their fulfillment.
What has happened to the pensions of America's workers is absolutely
a travesty of justice and goes against the principles of our Founding
Fathers who valued the pursuit of happiness.

{time} 1830

Separate and apart from the ridiculousness of us telling the other
body what to do when we have not done our own business, this bill is a
bad bill and should not become law. Shareholders should be made aware
of and allowed to vote on perks provided to retired executives, but not
under this bill. Retired corporate executives often get large
retirement benefits above and beyond their pensions and other
conventional benefits. These include housing, corporate jets, living
expenses, tickets to sporting events and the rest. Congress should
impose penalties on corporations providing such benefits unless
shareholders know and approve of such things. We should ensure that
corporate executives that crash their companies cannot escape with
golden or platinum parachutes. But corporate executives also get
retirement benefits that they can collect even after the corporation
fails. Congress should tax executives on their deferred compensation
benefits like all other income if the benefits are paid to executives
in the case of bankruptcy or corporate corruption.
This bill should be opposed because it endorses the Republicans'
inadequate pension legislation. The GOP bill does not show what we have
learned from the collapse of Enron, WorldCom and other corporate
scandals. The underlying bill does little to protect employees'
retirement savings. The underlying bill does not hold executives
accountable. The underlying bill is not worthy of passage. Let us mind
our own business, heed the needs of the American people, and pass our
education bill, our prescription drug bill, and our own good pension
bill.
I urge my colleagues to vote against this nonsensical sense of the
Congress.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume
to talk a little about what is actually before us today. The
gentlewoman from California talked about a lot of different issues and
ended by saying that she is not supportive of the legislation because
it does not include certain things. Everything she talked about
including has to do with executive compensation. Taxing executives and
talking about ways in which we can further keep executives from getting
the kind of compensation that they are currently getting is a
legitimate subject and it ought to be one that we have formal debate
on, have hearings on it and bring it to the floor. But I would ask the
gentlewoman how it is going to help one person have a more secure
pension. It has nothing to do with what is before us. It is a great
message.
I would ask the gentlewoman, I know that she is not on our committee
that dealt with the prescription drug issue for months and I see the
gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) is here, the gentleman from
Maryland (Mr. Cardin) and others from the committee, but to say that we
have not passed a prescription drug benefit I think is a little
surreal. I remember being on this floor and spending a lot of time on
that issue. I remember passing a $350 billion piece of legislation that
provides real coverage for prescription drugs. We can differ on how
that prescription drug coverage is offered to our seniors, but the
House took it upon itself to pass legislation that provides a real
prescription drug benefit.
It, too, now that the gentlewoman has raised it, if she wants to get
into the other issues, we can talk about all the ways the House has
acted and the Senate has not acted and the President awaits.
Prescription drugs is a perfect example. The Senate has not acted on
providing a prescription drug benefit. If you would consider the
generic drug legislation in the Senate a prescription drug benefit, I
hope you are not going home and telling your constituents that because
it is not going to offer them the kind of benefit that they are looking
for which is to be able to pay for prescription drugs. The average
senior pays over $2,100 a year. None of that will be helped by the
generic bill that passed in the Senate. The Senate was not able to pass
a prescription drug benefit. They had it on the floor for a week.
Homeland security is another issue that we worked on together. We
passed that issue 9 weeks ago now or something like that. The President
asked us to pass it, the House got busy, we had a good select committee
process, and we passed it. The Senate still can't

[[Page H6676]]

seem to get its act together to pass legislation in that regard to be
able to keep our country safer.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. LaTourette). The gentleman will suspend.
The phrase ``the Senate can't get its act together'' is not appropriate
under the rules.
The gentleman may continue.
Mr. PORTMAN. I apologize to the Chair. I will refrain from saying
that again.
My point is if you go down the list, whether it is prescription drug
coverage, whether it is the pension security bill before us today,
whether it is the faith-based initiative which passed this House on a
bipartisan basis, whether it is having a budget, the Senate does not
even have a budget, the Senate has not been able to, I am not sure how
I can characterize this, but the Senate has not been able to act and
the House has. I just think it is a little surreal to stand here and
say that somehow in this prescription drug issue, the House has not
acted and the Senate has is not accurate and to say that somehow this
pension bill is not good because it does not deal with executive
compensation issues which have nothing to do with what we were trying
to do at the time, which was to give people a little more security and
more rights with regard to their pensions.
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PORTMAN. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.
Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding. I will
do my best not to name the other body by its name.
First of all, let me say that perhaps it is news to the gentleman
that many people in our country have very serious concerns about the
cost of drugs. The Senate, the other body, passed in a very strong way,
78-21, a generic drug bill that is on that table. We want it to come to
the floor so this House can act upon it to lower the cost of
prescription drug to the American people.
As far as the bill that passed this House, that is a sham in my view.
The Democrats were proposing a prescription drug benefit with
guaranteed benefits under Medicare for America's seniors. The
Republican bill is a bill that tells seniors to go into the private
market and we will help you buy insurance for prescription drugs there.
But that is not a real guaranteed benefit.
Mr. PORTMAN. Reclaiming my time, I think I allowed the gentlewoman to
make her point, which was my point, which is that the House did act to
pass on a bipartisan basis, admittedly we did not agree on all the
details, but we passed a real prescription drug benefit under Medicare.
The Senate has not. I do not think there is any issue more important to
my constituents. I agree with the gentlewoman. I think it is very
important to move forward on that. But the Senate has not acted.
That is what we are trying to do today. We are just trying to shine
light on the fact that on a number of different issues, the United
States Senate has not followed suit, has not passed in a constructive
way legislation that we could then take into conference and then send
to the President for signature which then could have a real effect on
the lives of real people. There is no issue more important than
prescription drug coverage, but there is also a very important issue
out there which is how to keep people who want to be able to save for
their retirement, to give them a little more security so that they are
going to know, in the example of Enron for instance, where they could
not get rid of their corporate stock, they had to hold onto it because
they were restricted, that that could no longer happen. That cannot
happen if this legislation passes. People can no longer be told, You
have to keep that stock until you're age 50 plus 10 years of service.
They can no longer be told that during a blackout period executives are
able to trade shares and they cannot. They can no longer be told they
are not going to give notice of blackout periods when they cannot trade
stocks. They can no longer be in a situation where they are not getting
the kind of information that they need through quarterly statements,
which we are going to require under this legislation, what their
account is, what is going on with their plan. The kind of transparency
that the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) talked about is
absolutely essential. That is the stuff of this legislation.
It also does provide education. I talked earlier about the gentleman
from Maryland's bill and mine which lets people on a pretax basis get a
tax break for going out and getting education advice wherever they want
it. That is something I think this House on a bipartisan basis agrees
is necessary to move to the next step in retirement security. Those are
the kinds of things that are in this legislation. Those are the kinds
of things that we need to have done. The Senate needs to act. The House
has acted. It is time to actually help the American people and not just
talk about it.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time controlled by the gentleman from
Ohio has expired.
The Chair, since the next resolution will also deal with similar
matters, would again remind Members that phrases like ``the Senate has
not passed legislation in a constructive way'' is an inappropriate
characterization of Senate action.
The gentleman from California has 5 minutes left.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from
California (Ms. Pelosi).
Ms. PELOSI. I thank the gentleman for yielding time.
Mr. Speaker, it seems strange that we are here debating a sense of
the Congress to instruct the other body how to do its business when we
are not even allowed to use the name of the other body here. It seems
strange that we are here talking about what they should do with their
schedule when we have a schedule that begins on Tuesday night and ends
on Thursday afternoon. We give new meaning to reducing the week. It
used to be ``Thank God it's Friday.'' Now it is ``Thank God it's
Thursday afternoon,'' so Congress can go home, without passing any
appropriations bills, turning them into law before the end of the
fiscal year, which is October 1. Not one appropriation bill is law.
Yes, I say to the gentleman, the Republicans did not pass a
prescription drug bill under Medicare. The Democratic proposal was a
prescription drug benefit under Medicare, guaranteed benefits for our
seniors. The Republican bill is a hoax. Let us not try to fool the
American people. They know what is real. Let us do an education bill so
that we can fund education and afterschool programs and helping
children. Let us pass our appropriations bills, let us have HMO reform,
let us pass a prescription drug bill. Let us past electoral reform so
we can have honest counts in our country about who should serve in
office.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin).
Mr. CARDIN. I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me
this time.
Mr. Speaker, I regret that this resolution is before us. It is not in
the spirit of how we have worked on pension legislation in this
Congress earlier. I am proud of the work that the gentleman from Ohio
and I have done in a bipartisan way to bring forward pension
legislation. But let me remind my friend the gentleman from Ohio that
the legislation that we are considering today came to this body through
the Committee on Ways and Means in a bipartisan way, but the Committee
on Rules adopted an Education and Workforce version which was not in
keeping with the way that we proceeded in a bipartisan manner and in
fact contained provisions concerning investment advice which I think is
very damaging and needs to be corrected, and I think many people
believe that.
Let me also mention the other point that the gentleman from Ohio
raised, and that is about corporate responsibility and having equal
protection for the rank and file members versus the corporate
executives. The gentleman from Ohio asked a very important question.
How does that help people with their retirement benefits? Responsible
corporate management is very important for the workers of a company.
How much you compensate or how you try to get around the accounting
rules or what you do about executive compensation speaks to the manner
in which you run a company and manage a company. The employees

[[Page H6677]]

have a vested interest in making sure that company succeeds. When it
fails and we have this excessive compensation to the corporate
executives, it is different than how the rank and file are treated. We
should correct that. That is why I said I think we are wasting our time
on this resolution and we missed an opportunity because we should have
been talking about the issues that would have brought us closer
together on the underlying bill and given us a better chance to get a
bill to the President's desk.
I do not believe this resolution helps us achieve those objectives. I
regret that we are debating this resolution rather than the important
issues that we should in regards to protecting workers' rights.
Mr. MATSUI. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky), a member of the Committee on
Appropriations.
Mr. VISCLOSKY. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, I would open my remarks by stating that as a Member of
this House for the last 18 years, I never remember being so tired,
tired of doing nothing, tired of not passing an agricultural
appropriation bill, tired of not passing a foreign assistance bill in
this House, tired of not passing an energy and water bill in this
House.
The gentleman from Ohio in his remarks stated before that a number of
points as far as corporate compensation needing shareholder approval
was not before the body. He was absolutely right, because the gentleman
from California (Mr. Matsui) wanted to make those important questions
part of the real debate today and we were prohibited by the leadership
under the rule that provided consideration of this resolution from
doing it. What did the gentleman from California want to do as far as
making sure real American citizens who owned stock can either approve
or disapprove outrageous corporate perks?
Let us talk about corporate housing that is provided to executives.
In the First Congressional District, I have had thousands of
steelworkers lose their jobs. They have had to sell their house. Nobody
is providing them any house and voting on it. We have talked about
corporate jets and no one being able to vote on that as far as
shareholders are concerned. When my steelworkers come out to
Washington, D.C., they take a bus. When we talk about shareholders
having an opportunity to vote on reimbursement for living expenses, the
people I represent have lost their job and they do not have any money
to live on. The only thing I do not have a concern about is sporting
events, because they have all the time in the world to go to their
children's soccer games and Little League games and basketball games
because they have lost their job. They have lost their job. And we were
not allowed today to vote on that issue and that is wrong.
Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of strengthening
retirement security in America. Congress should act now to clean up
executive mismanagement and check corporate greed that is responsible
for the loss over $175 billion in pension savings.
In my home state of Indiana, 55 percent of the workforce has
pensions. Over the last year, their losses exceed four and a half
billion dollars worth of hard-earned retirement savings. Hooisers like
all Americans are shocked by reports of corporate executives who played
by different rules, who deceived employees about their company's
health, and who skimmed billions from corporations heading toward
bankruptcy while thousands of workers witnessed their jobs and pensions
evaporate.
The House of Representatives had a chance to enact meaningful reform
when the Pension Reform Act, H.R. 3762, was considered last April.
However, that bill fails to achieve basic protections reforms that most
businesses and workers should agree on such as allowing employees to
adequately control their own investments in pensions funds. Nor does it
provide for investment diversification, employee representation on
pension boards, or improved investment advice. For these reasons, I did
not support H.R. 3762 when it was considered by the House last April.
As the pension crisis has deteriorated in recent months, CEOs and
corporate executives continue to play by different rules than their
employees. The law maintains giant loopholes permitting employers to
deceive employees about stock sales and conceal stock options and
conflicts of interest. Pension funds are supposed to belong to the
employees, but they are still denied the ability to say how their funds
are managed.
Although I support the intent of this resolution to stimulate further
consideration of pension reform legislation. I believe that the House
bill could be improved. For example, I offered amendments requiring
corporations to notify their employees when stock levels in their
pension reforms exceeded designated amounts. This would encourage
workers to diversify their accounts in case of sudden and unexpected
downturns in their company stock holdings. I also proposed an amendment
requiring corporations to communicate to their workers in clear and
understandable terminology with regard to pension rules. Unfortunately,
the Rules Committee denied consideration of my amendments on the House
floor.
Congress should act now to improve a workforce environment where
retired workers now struggle to live with dignity after working for so
many years while executives take home disproportionately high benefits
at the expense of profits earned from employee-contributed pension
plans. The current pension reform legislation fails to make corporate
executives play fair or by the same set of pension standards as their
workers. I therefore urge rejection of this business as usual
resolution.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, today I rise in opposition to both H. Res.
540 and H. Res. 544. We desperately need to pass meaningful pension
security reform. But the plan put forward by Republicans flatly does
not pass the test. These resolutions simply call for urging the Senate
to comply with the Republican's ill-conceived reforms and then make
them permanent.
Republicans can chastise the Senate all they want or put hard hats on
corporate lobbyists to make people think they're listening to average,
everyday American workers. But it won't change the simple fact that
Republican pension reform just isn't enough. In fact, these resolutions
are so meaningless that they can only be viewed for what they are: a
temporary distraction from the real reform the Republicans have failed
to deliver.
President Bush has said, that if ``It's okay for the sailor, it ought
to be okay for the captain.'' Democrats agree with the President's
rhetoric and have taken it a step further in offering a bill--of which
I am an original cosponsor--that truly holds corporations accountable.
The Republicans simply allow corporate captains to sink their own
companies and let workers and investors go down with the ship.
Corporate executives should be required to face the same rules on
stock options and deferred compensation plans as apply to rank-and-file
employees. The bill that the Democrats propose would provide workers
the same rights to buy or sell company stock in their 401(k) plans as
corporate executives have in being permitted to buy or sell company
stock obtained through stock options.
President Bush claims, ``It is unfair for workers to be denied the
ability to sell stock when executives are free to sell stocks . . .''
and again Democrats completely agree. Corporations rarely restrict
their executives' capacity to buy and sell stock from stock options,
but many corporations restrict their rank-and-file workers from buying
and selling the corporation's stock in their 401(k) plans.
Democrats would eliminate this double standard by ensuring that CEOs
adhere to the same restrictions as employees in the buying and selling
of their company stock. Our bill would impose tax penalties on
executives who sell stock acquired from stock options if the sale
violates the restrictions rank-and-file employees face in their own
401(k) plans. Executives don't need any more perks than they already
receive. But it's high time this Congress listen to the calls of the
rank-and-file workers who want their pensions protected from
unscrupulous corporate thieves.
The resolutions before us today are an insult to American workers. I
urge my colleagues to vote no on H. Res. 540 and H. Res. 544.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time for debate has expired.
Pursuant to House Resolution 547, the resolution is considered read
for amendment and the previous question is ordered on the resolution.
The question is on the resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further
proceedings on this question will be postponed.

____________________