On the recordJuly 24, 2019
As chairwoman of the Education and Labor Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, I rise today to urge my colleagues to unanimously pass the Butch Lewis Act of 2019. Failure to do so will have dire consequences for at least 1.3 million Americans who did everything right. They put in decades of hard work to ensure that their retirement years would be secure, so many of them in physically grueling jobs in mining and construction and on ships and the Nation's highways. They often sacrificed wage increases, choosing instead a contribution to their pension plans so that they could live in their golden years with dignity and peace, a life well planned. Yet, after all of that, retired people and future retirees are now living in fear of losing everything they worked so hard for, and that is a shame. Failure to pass this legislation also will have dire consequences for tens of thousands of current workers and regional economies and could cost American taxpayers between $170 billion and $240 billion. {time} 1715 There is a huge risk, so we must act now. This is an issue on which both Democrats and Republicans should agree. This issue has no party, no race, no religion. We are all in the same boat, and we are running out of time. Our failure to take action to protect retirees and American taxpayers, our constituents, is not an option. It is a necessity, and we must act now. There is no time to waste.…
