[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9976]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                          RETIREMENT SECURITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shimkus). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. I thank my colleague from Maryland for yielding. We have 
been laboring at this for a couple of years now. We have worked with a 
lot of different groups around the country who are concerned with 
people being able to have a secure retirement. This includes 
incidentally for this proposal we are talking about tonight the Chamber 
of Commerce of the United States, as well as the AFL-CIO. To have that 
kind of a broad cross-section on any legislation around here is rather 
unusual. Why are all these groups supporting this proposal? For one 
very simple reason. They all have people they are representing who want 
to provide retirement security for workers. This proposal is 
commonsense changes, as the gentleman from Maryland said, to permit, 
for example, portability where you can be able to take your pension 
from job to job, responding to the increasingly mobile workforce out 
there. It also again goes into the pension rules and regulations which 
have become so burdensome that many small employers simply will not 
offer a plan at all. It cuts down on those rules and regulations to the 
point that smaller businesses are now going to be able to get into this 
business. It also cuts down some of the liability for our smaller 
businesses. Finally, very important, as the gentleman from Maryland 
said, it has the ability for people to save more for their own 
retirement. One that I particularly like that the gentleman from 
Maryland is very supportive of is the catch-up provision, for people 
who are over 50 years old coming back into the workforce. This would be 
a lot of working moms who stayed home to take care of kids and are now 
coming back into the workforce, we allow them to contribute an 
additional $5,000 a year to their retirement plan. This will help a lot 
of people to be able to build up that nest egg that is necessary for 
retirement.
  Mr. CARDIN. Let me just if I might in concluding, it is important for 
us to act on private retirement for many reasons. One is that yes, we 
are very pleased with the growth of our economy. We are projecting 
budget surpluses. We have low rates of inflation, low unemployment 
rates. We are very pleased by the signs that we see in our economy. But 
there is one statistic that the gentleman from Ohio pointed out which 
is not good for our future and, that is, the amount of savings that we 
have as a Nation. Among the industrial nations, we rank near the bottom 
on the amount that we save on a per capita basis. The chart that the 
gentleman used earlier showed that we are actually saving less today 
than we did 10 years ago. We should be saving more, particularly when 
we look at how strong our economy is. We need to adopt here in this 
body policies that will make it easier for Americans to save for the 
future, that is good for their security when they retire. It is good 
for economic growth in this Nation. It makes sense. It is not a 
partisan issue. It is a bipartisan issue. I urge this body during this 
session to take up legislation that will make it easier for Americans 
to save for their future. The Portman-Cardin bill is a major step 
forward in this direction. We hope that we would consider it this year.
  Mr. PORTMAN. I would urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to 
talk to the gentleman from Maryland, talk to me. H.R. 1102 is the name 
of the legislation. We have a number of cosponsors. We are looking for 
more. If we can come together again on a bipartisan basis to solve this 
problem and get this legislation passed, it will make the difference in 
people's lives. It will allow for millions of Americans to have real 
security in retirement rather than mere subsistence. It is something 
that we can do this year. Of course we all want to solve Social 
Security's problems. That may be a little more difficult to do in this 
environment. But this is one where we should be able to come together 
to provide for people to be able to save more for their retirement even 
outside of Social Security, even while we are working on the Social 
Security problem.

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