Pete Stark: “Admittedly, this bill will encourage more plans. The best way to encourage plans is to have no restriction on them at…”

“Admittedly, this bill will encourage more plans. The best way to encourage plans is to have no restriction on them at all, and then the very rich will have plans, but they will not cover the employees. Professor Halperin at the Harvard Law School has written and suggested that this really solves a minor problem by creating a loophole through which we could march an elephant, or a donkey, too, perhaps, to be bipartisan in the closing minutes of this debate. But the fact is that this is a bill written to satisfy rich contributors to the Republican Party, and it gives assistance to major corporations and to owners of small businesses without any regard to protecting the employees who are under them. And it is couched in some language that will say there is a little bit here and there, but the fact is that we give the Treasury the right to make the decision of whether the plans meet the antidiscrimination rules, and then give the Treasury no direction. So if the Secretary of the Treasury does not act, there are no antidiscrimination rules. Mr. Speaker, this is a bad bill. It is a bill that is unfair. It is a bill that helps only the very rich and the owners of businesses, but leaves the workers with less protection than they start with now. I guess that is what we have to expect from a Republican-controlled House. That is what they have been doing at every step of the way.”