U.S. Airways

Mr. GRASSLEY. If my colleague would withhold his request, I would like to speak on this issue.

I appreciate the efforts of the two Senators from Pennsylvania to help these underfunded airline pension plans, particularly as it relates to a company that is very important to the economy of their State. We are also in a situation where, as far as I know, the House Ways and Means Committee has not acted on this issue and, consequently, even if the Senate were to pass it the measure would be subject to a blue slip, meaning, under the Constitution, a revenue measure needs to start in the House of Representatives. So if we took action, what would that do? It could not become law.

The legislation the Senator has introduced would create, as a matter of substance, perverse disincentives for all plans that paid premiums to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The bill would permit a single airline to avoid the pension funding rules in the Internal Revenue Code, while every responsible plan sponsor funds its own plans. We will need to deal with this particular problem when we deal with the rest of the funding rules and the pension interest rate problem because that is a very real problem and several times we have tried to address it, just not successfully through the whole process. So we get to a point that one set of rules for one company harms the nation's pension laws applicable to the remaining plans.
I respectfully suggest that something this important would—surely ought to be referred to the Finance Committee and that we should deal with it under the regular rules of the committee, but particularly we need a solution that would be nation-wide, not dealing with just one company. So I express opposition to this effort.

Mr. GRASSLEY. I might modify it just a little bit, but understand that I am making this statement not having had a chance to think deeply on it. But it would be in relationship to the extent to which there should be a hearing just on this one company as opposed to a hearing on the pension problem generally and in the larger context because I did voice in my statement to the Senate that it seems to me that we do have to look into this area, and we have to look at it as a pension problem in a much broader context than just one company. Obviously, in that context, I have absolutely no opposition to looking at the problem of one company. But I also think it ought to be looked into only in the context of the others because of the extent to which it might lead to other companies making the same request.