Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, the pension security measure that we have before us is of great urgency for American workers and their employers, and that is because the 30-year Treasury bond that is used to calculate the contributions and obligations for employers for single-employer defined benefit systems are so low that it is causing companies to have to take money that they would invest in their business, that they would invest in more jobs, and put it into their pension plans when, in reality, they do not need to put that money there. Mr. Speaker, this issue of what we do with defined benefit pension plans is a very difficult path that we must follow. On one hand, we want to protect the obligations and the rights of employees who have been offered these plans and to maintain the retirement security that they have been promised and that they are expecting. At the same time, we need to find a way to make these plans work more smoothly so that employers do not continue to leave these plans in droves, as they have over the last 15 years. That is why the bill we have before us today was intended to fix this discount rate for single-employer defined benefit plans, and we go from a 30-year Treasury bond to a blend of corporate bond indexes that we believe more appropriately reflects the marketplace in terms of what the discount rate should be as they calculate these obligations.”