[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13517]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           THREE-LEGGED STOOL

  (Mr. MELANCON asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. MELANCON. Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of the 3-legged stool 
that each of us should build when we are looking towards our 
retirement. Two of these legs, pensions and individual savings, are the 
responsibility of the individual and the employee.
  Mr. Speaker, as events over the last month have shown, it is clear 
that the pension leg of the stool is being seriously undermined by 
companies who are striking their responsibilities to live up to the 
promises they made to their employees. The best example of this comes 
in the form of United Airlines who sold out its employees the first 
chance it got as a way to come out of bankruptcy.
  Employees who have been promised $100,000 a year pensions will now 
have to settle for $45,000 a year, a dramatic cut in their promised 
benefits. That may still seem like a lot of money, but these employees 
were promised a lot more, and they are not going to receive it.
  Couple that with the giant market crash in 2000 when the stock market 
lost $9 billion. Mr. Speaker, there is no question that there is a lot 
of uncertainty right now, and maybe that is why Americans are so 
determined to keep one thing that is certain, that is, Social Security 
from being privatized.

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