Max Baucus: “on the surface, this is a complicated matter. Pension law is complicated. It gets into whether a company has a defined…”

“on the surface, this is a complicated matter. Pension law is complicated. It gets into whether a company has a defined contribution plan, a defined benefit plan, issues such as: What is the assumed interest rate that applies to the pension plan? It is backwards: the higher the rate, frankly, the less of an obligation by the company to contribute to the plan. I think on the surface we would think it would be a little bit of the opposite. It gets into length of years, the time within which companies are required to contribute to their plan to fully fund their plan. It is very complicated on the surface. It is very simple. This question we are dealing with here is very simple when you get down to what is going on around here. So I ask my colleagues to pay a lot of attention to the statistics and all the complexities at the surface, but pay more attention to what is going on here. After all the charts and all the statistics and all the stuff, what is going on here? I think Senators and their staffs will find, when they do that, what is going on here is the question of--there are two questions here--do we want to keep the playing field level among the airlines? Airlines are going through some difficult times today, clearly. Fuel costs are high. There are other problems facing the airlines. But do we want the playing field to be level? The second question: Do we want to help provide adequate protection to the pension plans, to retirees?”