Gilbert Gutknecht: “virtually everything that has been said this morning about this bill is true, and it is a bipartisan bill. I am…”

“virtually everything that has been said this morning about this bill is true, and it is a bipartisan bill. I am delighted with the work that has gone into it, but I reluctantly rise in opposition to the bill. Mr. Speaker, I want my colleagues to all consider for a moment the term ``vested.'' I think we all think we know what that term means. The dictionary says it is law, settled, if fixed, absolute, being without contingency, as in a vested right. About 2 years ago, thousands of employees that worked for IBM Corporation found out that vested does not mean what we think it means, and all of a sudden these people who had calculators on their computers, as part of their tool kit so they could calculate what their pension benefit would be when they retired, all of a sudden woke up and the company had unilaterally changed the pension formula. They had gone from a defined benefit program to a cash balance program, and they were given no choice. And I had offered to the authors language to give them that choice, just for the vested employees, because once those rights are vested, it seems to me we have a moral obligation as a Congress, as employers. In fact, the term in pension policy is fiduciary responsibility, and that transcends legal. Yes, it was legal for IBM, and many of these other corporations, to convert their pension plans into cash balanced plans. It was legal, I think. I am not so certain, but it was not moral. It was the wrong thing to do.”