Barbara Kennelly: “I rise to talk about this bill that is before us this evening, and I have to say that it has some very excellent…”

“I rise to talk about this bill that is before us this evening, and I have to say that it has some very excellent provisions in it. Having said that, I must admit that one of the reasons that I say that is that it contains one of the things that I have worked on for years, and I thank Chairman Archer for including it in the bill. This reduces the vesting period for multiemployer pension plans from 10 years to 5 years. What that means is that 1 million people will receive a well-deserved pension when and if the President signs this bill. This bill also extends employer-provided educational assistance through December 31, 1996. This is so important to workers who want to maintain their competitiveness in an ever changing world. I do wish, and I almost cannot understand why if we put in the additional continuation of the educational assistance, that we did not do it for graduate school. If we are really serious about competing in a world economy, we certainly have to continue our education. As we know, people have job after job throughout their careers, and I just wish this could be reconsidered and we would have that deduction for our graduate education. But I look at another thing in this bill and I see it has very good increases on the limitation on expensing to $25,000 in the year 2003.”