[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

[[Page S1556]]

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

[[Page S1557]]

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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