Political Quotes

“I am here to talk about a complicated but really important issue, and it is one that Congress and the administration needs to address before it results in a devastating financial impact on millions of retirees, raises costs to thousands of businesses, some of which are going to go insolvent--bankrupt--unless it is dealt with, and an issue that can harm the overall economy if it is not dealt with. The Presiding Officer has been very involved in this issue, and I hope others will bear with me as we talk about it, because it is complicated, but it is really important. I am talking about multiemployer pension reform, and as anyone who is working on this problem can tell you, it is something that we cannot ignore. Briefly, a multiemployer pension plan consists of multiple different companies. Usually, employees in a single union pool their assets together, and they provide a defined benefit pension--the old-style pensions, a guaranteed pension, so-called--to cover workers and retirees. These plans are jointly administered, then, between the unions and the employers as trustees, who determine the benefits and the employer contributions based on the collective bargaining process and subject to whatever statutory funding requirements there are that we provide here in the U.S. Congress and through law. It is a system of a lot of different employers coming together and providing a pension under one union typically.…”