Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2005

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2005 -- (House of Representatives - September 08, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 754 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 5006.

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered by our colleague and join in offering the amendment by our colleague from California (Mr. George Miller). This amendment follows very closely legislation that the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and I introduced last year to address this problem.

There are at the moment that we gather here in Congress, I suppose, tens of millions of Americans who are out working, trying to ensure that their families have a better future. As they do their work and they look forward to payday to get their paycheck, one of the things they also consider are whatever benefits that they get with their work. For many workers, particularly those that move in their forties and fifties to begin to think about what retirement lies ahead, they have a particular concern with the retirement plan for their company and whether it will, in fact, allow them to retire in dignity and enjoy the fruits of their labor after they have provided for their family and community, to be able to enjoy a decent, dignified retirement.

In recent years, American employees, American workers, have had good reason to be fearful that that very significant benefit of retirement that they have worked for, with some companies perhaps for 20 or 30 years, will not be there when they need it in full amount.

First there were the employees of Enron. Thousands of them, through no fault of their own, lost their retirement. Then the same thing happened at WorldCom. Thousands of people who had worked for that company almost since its origin losing their retirement future, the hope of a dignified retirement, many of them having to go back into the workforce.

Really, when you look back over the activities of this Congress since the Enron debacle, as far as preventing another debacle for employees at Enron and their retirement futures, or WorldCom, this Congress has done next to nothing to prevent other employees from suffering the same fate.

As the years have gone by and Congress has been inactive, our economy has struggled, and we have begun to see more major companies, particularly in the airline industry, begin to raise questions as to whether they were going to put their pension plan into bankruptcy, whether they were going to stop making pension payments.

This amendment does not solve all those problems. It is a very modest amendment. It simply expresses confidence in the employees, that they deserve to know the same information that their employer is filing with the government bureaucracy.

As my colleague from California just pointed out, were it not for the fine print in legislation that was approved in 1994, we would have the right to know this information. This amendment is based on the principle that if the employee has the information, they can choose to go to another employer who has a fully funded pension plan, or they can turn to their employer and ask, why not? Why am I being given a false promise of a secure retirement, when, in fact, this plan is not funded at a sufficient level to assure that all workers who work here and retire will be able to enjoy their retirement with dignity?

Of course, there is another public policy consideration here, and that is that there is a government agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, that is responsible for ensuring and protecting against those plans that fail. From all of the recent reports about the status of that corporation, we face the potential of something that will make the savings and loan bailout of a few decades back look modest in comparison to the dangers of major pension funds, one after another, going under and placing a burden on this corporation.

The Bush administration came out in support of the very kind of amendment that is being offered here today. As usual, once some special interest began to question the wisdom of this provision, they fell moot. But their recommendation is a matter of public policy; it is clear, and it is out there.

The Government Accountability Office, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation itself, all of these have recommended that this information that they get be made available to the employee so that the employee will be empowered.

This amendment is based on the principle that the workers that are out there deserve the right to know, they deserve the right to be empowered about their pension future, and I can see no good reason not to provide that information.

The suggestion by the chairman of the committee that he has a long-term plan to deal with this is great, but it is a little too long for the term of those who are concerned about their retirement safety and, one after another, pension plans failing.

I urge adoption of the amendment.

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