Gilbert Gutknecht: “I rise to speak on behalf of 7,000 current and former IBM employees who live in my district. While most of this bill is…”

“I rise to speak on behalf of 7,000 current and former IBM employees who live in my district. While most of this bill is necessary and the legislation is appropriate, the weakness of the bill is that it fails to clarify the rules concerning the conversion of defined benefit pension plans into cash balance pension plans. I understand the bill will not affect the IBM employees and their court case. It could, however, affect millions of Americans that are currently vested in defined benefit pension plans. Even though they may be working for a very profitable company, they could, under the terms of this bill, show up for work one day and learn that their promised benefits have been dramatically reduced with the sweep of a pen. Under cash balance plans, older, long-serving employees do not have the same opportunities to build up retirement benefits that younger workers do. The bill before us today would allow conversions to take place but gives no protections to workers during these transitions. I offered an amendment last night at the Rules Committee to provide protections to vested workers. Unfortunately, the Committee did not rule my amendment in order. The Senate version of the bill contains more protections for workers. For those and other reasons AARP supports the Senate passed bill and opposes the House bill. I would hope protections like the amendment I tried to offer will be incorporated in the final version.…”