Charlie Melancon: “we have all heard of the 3-legged stool that each of us should build when we are looking towards our retirement. Two of…”

“we have all heard of the 3-legged stool that each of us should build when we are looking towards our retirement. Two of these legs, pensions and individual savings, are the responsibility of the individual and the employee. Mr. Speaker, as events over the last month have shown, it is clear that the pension leg of the stool is being seriously undermined by companies who are striking their responsibilities to live up to the promises they made to their employees. The best example of this comes in the form of United Airlines who sold out its employees the first chance it got as a way to come out of bankruptcy. Employees who have been promised $100,000 a year pensions will now have to settle for $45,000 a year, a dramatic cut in their promised benefits. That may still seem like a lot of money, but these employees were promised a lot more, and they are not going to receive it. Couple that with the giant market crash in 2000 when the stock market lost $9 billion. Mr. Speaker, there is no question that there is a lot of uncertainty right now, and maybe that is why Americans are so determined to keep one thing that is certain, that is, Social Security from being privatized. ____________________”