Political Quotes

“I rise in strong support of H.R. 3419, the Tax Simplification and Technical Corrections Act. I am pleased that we finally have this bill before us today. Despite our best efforts, we do make mistakes in drafting legislation. This bill corrects errors we have made in the past, as well as conforms various provisions in recently enacted tax and other legislation within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means. These errors can have unintended consequences, and it is important that we show the American people that Congress can fix problems of this nature without getting bogged down in the politics. This bill also contains a number of simplification provisions. I would like to focus on one in particular--the elimination of the special vesting rule for multi-employer pension plans. In 1986, I worked with Chairman Rostenkowski and we were able to reduce the vesting period--the minimum period an employee must work before becoming eligible for a pension--from 10 years to 5 years for most workers in America. However, multi-employer plans retained 10 year vesting. This is something I have been working to change since 1986. It simply doesn't make sense that an employee enrolled in a multi-employer plan has to work twice as long in order to be entitled to a pension. It is about time we leveled the playing field.”