Political Quotes

“Mr. President, shortly, I am going to be joined by Senator Portman. The two of us have been working for well over a decade on retirement savings issues. When both of us were Members of the House of Representatives, we worked on pension legislation together. It was unusual at that time to have a Democrat and a Republican working together. There was a great deal of discussion about tax reform at that time, and it seemed like neither the Democratic nor Republican leadership was interested in dealing with retirement savings at that point. Yet Congressman Portman and I joined forces, recognizing the need to strengthen retirement savings in this country. We authored a bill known as the Portman-Cardin bill. It was more of a process than it was legislation. We brought all stakeholders together, and we sat around, listened to each other, and came to a consensus bill that was enacted into law and made permanent. It provides greater portability among the different pension plans in this country, recognizing that employees were shifting jobs, and therefore it was necessary for them to be able to protect their retirement savings. We looked at increasing the amount of money that individuals could put away for retirement. One of the provisions provided for catchup for people over 50 years of age because we recognized that people-- particularly women--who entered the workforce at a later time didn't have as many years to put money away for retirement savings.…”