[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 51 (Tuesday, April 20, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Page S4155]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            VOTE EXPLANATION

  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, due to a previous obligation, I was unable 
to vote on the conference report to H.R. 3108, the Pension Funding 
Equity Act of 2004. If I had been present, I would have voted in 
support of the conference report. I appreciate the work done on this 
conference report by my colleagues, Senators Grassley, Gregg, 
McConnell, Baucus, and Kennedy. As others have mentioned before, this 
legislation is very important to many businesses and their employees 
suffering from the recent economic downturn and in need of pension 
relief that the act will provide.
  While the act will help millions of employees who are covered under 
this measure, I am concerned that approximately 9.7 million Americans 
who belong to multi-employer pension plans, many of them in the 
construction industry, who are facing the same problems as employees 
covered by other pension plans, will not be receiving this relief. In 
January, when the Senate overwhelmingly passed H.R. 3108, we agreed 
that our pension laws should affect not just single-employer plans but 
also multi-employer plans. We thought including multi-employers was 
fair and just. Unfortunately, in conference, there were some that 
agreed with the Bush administration that multi-employer plans should 
only receive partial relief. Some would say that the relief will be 
four percent, others will say it is even less than that. All I know is 
that millions of hardworking Americans, who report to work just as any 
other employee, will not receive this relief.
  However, with the April 15 deadline where many employers were facing 
an inflated contribution to their pension plans and the 
administration's threat of a veto if the final bill included multi-
employer relief, I could not penalize approximately 35 million 
Americans who are covered by single-employer defined benefit plans. The 
low 30-year Treasury bond interest rates and the unpredictable stock 
market have adversely affected many companies that contribute to these 
defined benefit plans. Again, while I believe these conditions affected 
not just single-employer plans, but also multi-employer plans, I could 
not jeopardize the 35 million Americans who could have lost their 
pensions if this important legislation were not enacted into law.

                          ____________________