Political Quotes

“this is a time when millions of our families are walking on an economic tightrope. I will talk for a couple of minutes about the double standard that applies with respect to the pension rights of our workers. When we look at what is happening today in America with the workers--for example, at United Airlines, we saw it at Enron, as well--the pensions of our workers are in a free fall, but the pensions of the executives, the CEOs, are safe and secure in a tidy lockbox. I don't think that is right. As a member of the Senate Finance Committee, I will do everything I can to change it. I have been trying to figure out exactly how much money the CEO of any major company is receiving in this country in his or her pension package. This is a very difficult exercise. It is sort of like trying to find a needle in multiple haystacks. To begin the effort to try to figure out what these executives are paid, I was first instructed to call the Department of Labor to obtain a copy of a company's annual report of employee benefit plans. This is what is called the form 5500. After I did that, I was told to contact the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to get hold of the company's 10(k) filing for the year in question. Armed with these two documents, you then have to figure out the amount of unfunded liability for all of the groups the company pays, and then subtract that number from a line item in the 10(k) form.…”