Political Quotes

“As we have just made formally a matter of record, the Pension Protection Act was an imperfect piece of legislation. This technically corrects, not substantively changes, but technically corrects an imperfect bill. It should go forward. We should be doing more, Mr. Speaker, and this is where I want to spend the balance of my time tonight. I am almost shaking with anger at what we are not doing to correct the Pension Protection Act before it will have a very negative impact on the very working people that we talk so much about trying to help. I will give you a couple of examples. There is a provision in the bill, never discussed, that inadvertently changes funding requirements for public pension plans. A plan like the State of North Dakota offers for its employees has a rate of 7.5 percent. Well, the Pension Protection Act in its present form requires them to credit interest at no greater than market rate. Without correction, we are going to have State legislatures reducing the interest credited for their public employees under fully funded public plans. It makes no sense. It needs fixing. It is a mistake. But we can't get the critical people in the critical committees to agree to fixing this.”