Rob Portman: “I will be brief. Just to repeat, we are not really talking about the same bill here. What we are trying to do here today…”

“I will be brief. Just to repeat, we are not really talking about the same bill here. What we are trying to do here today is simply to extend the provisions of the retirement savings law that was passed by this Congress last year. Congress just took up legislation to deal with the post-Enron pension issues, and we passed that on a bipartisan basis. Congress just took up recently corporate governance issues related to Enron. We passed those on a bipartisan basis. We can revisit those, we can go back, maybe we should do different things, but this is not what we are about today. We are talking about the pension changes. Again, the gentleman from California, it is good theater, but he is not talking about the facts. Let me give you some actual statistics rather than just rhetoric. Of those people who are involved in pensions, 77 percent make less than $50,000 a year. These are middle-income workers. These are lower-income workers. Let me give you another statistic. There was a recent study showing that those who benefit most from retirement plans earn between $15,000 and $50,000 a year. Those same families pay slightly more than one-third of all Federal income taxes. They receive two-thirds of the pension accruals in this country. Those are the folks we are trying to help.”