Mike Levin: “House Republicans are bringing this bill, rather than a final conference report, for one reason and one reason only--to…”

“House Republicans are bringing this bill, rather than a final conference report, for one reason and one reason only--to prevent the inclusion of long-overdue provisions to extend important business tax credits that reward things like research and development and efforts to hire low-wage workers. Those credits expired 7 months ago and are now hostage to the Republican quest to pass tax cuts for a tiny number of incredibly wealthy families. That is an outrage. However much I deplore the process by which this bill was rushed to the floor, and however flawed it may be, it does include some critically important and very time-sensitive provisions, and its worst elements have been significantly improved since the original Bush administration proposal. For that reason, I have decided to vote in favor of this bill. The bill includes provisions which must be enacted quickly if we hope to save pension benefits for large numbers of workers in the airline industry and in the building trades and other industries with multi- employer pension plans. Without a provision in this bill which would give airlines more time to fully fund their pension plans, Northwest Airlines has said it will have to terminate its pension plan and turn it over to the Federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. That's a bad outcome for everyone. It's a bad outcome for Northwest employees, because many of them will not receive their full earned pensions if that happens.…”