Protecting Prudent Investment of Retirement Savings Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this bill unnecessarily restricts the free market. It dictates what private sector fiduciaries can and cannot consider when making investment decisions that directly affect the savings and retirement savings of hardworking Americans.

For this reason and at the appropriate time, I will offer a motion to recommit this bill back to committee.

If House rules permitted, I would have offered the motion with an important amendment to this bill. My amendment would have been the text of H.R. 1357, the Susan Muffley Act.

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Ms. KAPTUR. H.R. 1357 is a bill that addresses a true injustice to thousands of workers and retirees across this country, a bill to restore the Delphi salaried retirees' pensions.

For decades, the men and women who built Delphi--and they worked hard--were told that if they worked hard and kept their end of the deal, their retirement benefits would be there for them.

However, that promise was broken through no fault of their own when Delphi collapsed, leaving more than 23,000 salaried workers, including over 5,000 in Ohio, with sharply reduced or eliminated pensions. Those are the folks that I mean. This is simply wrong. It is un-American.

Mr. Turner, Ms. Tenney, Ms. Moore, and I have a bipartisan bill to restore dignity, fairness, and economic security to people who earned it the hard way. They worked hard.

For too long, Delphi retirees have been asked to wait, to be patient, and to accept less than what they were promised and worked for and earned. Many are now well into their retirement years. It almost seems like a conspiracy to keep their retirement benefits away from them. They face rising healthcare costs, higher prices at the grocery store, and fixed incomes that were unjustly cut.

These are not abstract numbers. These are real people who planned their lives around commitments and promises that were made to them and then broken.

Let me remind you that when the auto rescue moved forward, corporate interests were stabilized, made whole, but working people were left behind, and that imbalance has lingered for two decades. Shame on us as a country. Shame on us and the people who allowed that to happen.

The Susan Muffley Act corrects that injustice. It directs the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to recalculate benefits without arbitrary gaps that punished Delphi retirees alone. It is a narrowly tailored fix, but one that delivers profound relief and long-overdue justice.

This legislation is also about reaffirming a core American value: If you work hard, play by the rules, and keep your word, your company and country should keep its word to you.

These retirees did not speculate. They did not gamble. They paid into a system that was supposed to protect them. Congress has a moral obligation to fix what was broken. Too bad the market can't do it alone.

Every year of delay compounds the harm. The Susan Muffley Act will finally make these workers whole. I hope my colleagues will join me in voting for the motion to recommit.

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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