[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 24 (Wednesday, March 1, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1555-S1557]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SENATE SCHEDULE
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I hope it is not necessary to have cloture
on the LIHEAP matter. It has been cleared on our side and I understand
the distinguished Senator from Tennessee is doing everything he can to
have it cleared on his side. If the cloture vote is necessary, we will
move forward as rapidly as possible. It is something we need to do.
Both Senator Frist and I have committed to move this bill as quickly as
we can. I hope that can be done.
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, could I ask, through the Chair to the
Democratic leader, to express an opinion first, and that is we
absolutely have to proceed with this pensions legislation. I know my
distinguished colleague has come to the floor and said certain things
about why we are not proceeding to conference, but it does come down to
the fact that in November we passed this bill and the House passed it
about a month later. At that point in time I said the conferees would
be seven and five. As the Democratic leader knows, that is, after
consultation--with consultation to the Democratic leader--the
prerogative of the majority leader. I have been consistent with that.
We have waited a couple of months for a response and the Democratic
leader has given us a response, but the response is that it is
unacceptable, we need more people--because of things going on within
their caucus.
I think it is time to stop--both. Everybody stop playing games and
let's get to conference. It is an important issue. We had this April 15
deadline. We finished work on the floor now 3 months ago, and yet we
had this bickering about the number of conferees. I know it is tough.
We have been in conversation about what those numbers should be. It is
going to be 7 to 5. And it is tough. The tax reconciliation bill we
just did was 2 to 1. It is always tough, telling our fellow Senators
that, no, you can't be on this conference report because we want a
reasonable number of people.
I would make another plea that we proceed, that the other side of the
aisle
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appoint their five. We are ready to appoint our seven. We could go to
conference this afternoon. We could address the issue. It is alleged
either that there are other sort of motivations on our side or that we
are not interested in this pension bill. It is gamesmanship and
partisanship and it is wrong. It is time to get to the bill itself. We
care about it. It is important to the American people. We have done the
work on the Senate floor. We have the number of conferees. My seven are
ready to go and I make another plea to the Democratic leader to step up
and do what the American people expect, appoint conferees and go to
conference.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have some remarks I was going to make on
the pension conference and I will do that. But in response to my
friend, the majority leader, partisanship is in the eyes of the
beholder. We believe this conference is so important. It involves the
jurisdiction of two committees, Finance and HELP. This is a Senate
conference. It is not a Republican conference or Democratic conference,
it is the Senate. The Senate is going to be represented in conference.
I suggest to my friend, the majority leader--he came to the floor last
week and suggested, rather than 8 to 6, which I suggested, that it
would be 9 to 6.
We could resolve this very quickly. I would be happy to work with
nine Republicans and seven Democrats--the two-vote majority we have
agreed with. That is fine. The Senate has 55 Republicans and 45
Democrats. But I don't think it is unfair, and I don't think it has any
partisanship involved. We have worked very hard from the very beginning
on this bill to not have a partisan bill. I worked very hard,
personally, as did Senator Kennedy and Senator Baucus, to do what we
could to eliminate extraneous amendments and we did that. It was not
easy, but we did it. That bill got out of here very quickly. It passed;
97 Senators voted for this legislation.
Maybe it solves the problems to go 9 to 7 rather than 8 to 6. I am
willing to be reasonable in this. I think I have been. But I do not
think it is being unreasonable; I do not think it is being partisan. If
I suggest, with two major committees on a very complex piece of
legislation, that we have six Democrats representing the Senate in the
conference, I don't think that is asking too much.
I have had calls from my friends downtown, people who represent
interested parties. I have told my friends we are ready to go to
conference--yesterday. All we want is to have a fair makeup of the
conferees.
I ask the distinguished majority leader to reconsider. This 7 to 5--
there is nothing set in stone that that is the way it should be. We
have had conferences where we have had 27 to 23 conferees representing
the Senate in a conference. So I don't think it is asking too much to
have 14 Senators, involving two of the most important committees in the
Senate, to go to conference with the House.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader.
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, it is apparent where we are. What I do not
want to see happen is that this escalates into comments from the other
side accusing us of not caring about this bill. We have led on this
bill. We finished it in November. The House finished it in December.
Right after that I said the ratio will be 7 to 5. It is an internal
problem within their caucus that we have to address and that is what
leadership is all about--in terms of picking five people and picking
seven people and then proceeding to conference.
It is almost as petty that it plays into this pattern of obstruction.
It is what is going on. I went through my whole opening there--we have
been on this PATRIOT Act now for weeks and weeks with procedural move
after procedural move after procedural move on a bill we know is going
to pass overwhelmingly.
When you see what happens there, and then you see this postponement
and obstruction on a pensions bill we care passionately about, that the
American people care about, that hundreds of thousands of people's
futures depend on, that is disturbing. We have to step above it. That
is what the American people expect us to be doing.
I am concerned. The Senate Democrats are refusing to go to conference
with 7 to 5. They have had 2 months to address this within their
caucus. I proposed if you can't appoint five and you can't convince
five people to represent you, then we will go to six and then we are
going to go to nine. That will be a counterproposal. If that is
unacceptable, go back to 7 to 5.
By precedent, it is the majority leader who can set the numbers, and
the numbers do vary all over the place. We set it at 7 to 5 from day
one and it is 7 to 5 again today. I understand there may be a
legitimate dispute on the other side of the aisle. You have too many
people who want to be on this conference and decide who gets to serve.
But I am beginning to think--I think it is becoming apparent to outside
people who are interested in this bill--that this is fitting into a
pattern of more postponement, more delay, more obstruction. What I
think is unfair and wrong is to try to turn that and say it is because
we don't care about pension legislation.
Anyway, we could go on and on forever. We will talk more about the
details of this. Let's get on with it. The American people deserve
more. This is petty politics and it is time to rise above it.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, as I said a few minutes ago, partisanship is
in the eye of the beholder. Obstruction is in the eye of the beholder.
I think if this were a jury out there, they would say: I heard Senator
Reid say he is willing to go to conference in a minute or two. What he
wants is to have the conference have six Democrats and eight
Republicans. Is there anything obstructionist about that? The
distinguished majority leader talks about problems with the Senate
Democrats. There is no problem with the Senate Democrats. We want to go
to conference. But it appears to me maybe this is all a ploy not to
have a bill.
It is not unreasonable, when you have the Finance Committee and the
HELP Committee, to say there should be three from Finance and three
from the HELP Committee. Then, to show how unreasonable this is, the
majority leader says: Well, I will have nine and you have six.
I would say to a jury, if we were talking to a jury: Who is more
reasonable? But it all boils down to the fact that another day has gone
by and the Senate has been unable to appoint conferees to the pension
reform bill. We have millions of Americans worried about their
pensions. This legislation will help and we need to get it moving.
Once again, let me be very clear. We want to go to conference. We can
name conferees right now and send the bill to the House so they can
name their conferees.
We are not interested in delaying the bill. We support it and want it
to go to conference. Delaying the conference on pension reform has real
consequences.
Each day that there is a delay in naming conferees is another day
that employers don't know what rules they will need to follow in
funding their pension plans.
This uncertainty could lead some employers to decide to discontinue
their pension plans. We have seen several companies make that decision
recently. A delay in moving forward with this bill could only
exacerbate this trend.
I am coming to the conclusion that maybe the majority does not want
this pension reform bill.
Each day we delay is another day of uncertainty for those employers
who offer so-called ``cash balance'' pension plans.
Conflicting legal decisions on the applicability of age
discrimination rules on these plans have forced some sponsors to drop
their pension plans. The Senate's inability to move forward with this
legislation also delays improvements for workers whose employer
converts to a cash balance plan.
Each day that we delay is another day that employees will be left in
the dark.
Each day we delay is another day that employees will be prevented
from diversifying away from employer stock in their 401(k) plans.
This change is an outgrowth of the situation surrounding the collapse
of Enron where, as we speak, ex-Enron officials are in criminal courts.
That change is an outgrowth of their situation, where employees were
prevented from selling company stock which they held in their
retirement plans. Each
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day that we delay is another day that workers would not get transparent
financial information on their pension plans. Each day we delay is
another day that benefit protections for divorced and surviving spouses
aren't made.
Each day that we delay is another day that many of our Nation's
airline employees must wait to see if Congress will provide their
industry the relief that will allow them to keep their pensions.
The only thing preventing us from appointing conferees is an
agreement on the size of the Senate's delegation. The majority leader
insisted on limiting the delegation to 12 Members, 7 Republicans and 5
Democrats.
We agree with the two-vote margin. We don't like it, but we agree.
We believe that limiting the number of Democrats to five
unnecessarily shortchanges not only Democrats but the entire Senate of
the expertise that will prove successful in reaching agreement with the
House of Representatives on a bill that can attract a strong majority
of support in the Senate.
I repeat. This is not a Senate Republican conference, it is a Senate
conference.
We are not contesting the Republicans' desire to have a two-vote
advantage when we get to conference, but we believe it is important to
have each committee adequately represented.
The majority leader has offered to expand the delegation by one but
only if he gets two additional Republican conferees. He said: I will
give you one Democrat, but I want two. That is the 9-to-6 ridiculous
proposal that has been made. It doesn't have to be 7 to 5. It can be 8
to 6, it can be 9 to 7. I have no problem in selecting people to go on
the conference. I certainly don't think it should affect the majority
leader. If he doesn't like 8 to 6, let him put another Senator on. Have
it 9 to 7.
All we are asking is that a sufficient number of conference,
conferees are appointed to the conference. Having 14 conferees in the
ratio of 8 to 6 gives the Senate the best opportunity to bring back a
bill from conference that will garner support from the Senate.
Let the Record be very clear. Democrats have worked closely with our
Republican colleagues every step of the way on this legislation. The
result has been a very strong bipartisan bill.
I hope that the majority leader will consider his opposition to our
request so we can move forward with this conference.
Together, we can improve our Nation's pension system and make America
a better place.
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