Rob Andrews

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, we should not replace no advice for workers with bad advice for workers. A few days ago, the attorney general for New York alleged a scheme involving the Merrill Lynch firm that worked like this: one part of the Merrill Lynch house, he alleged, was collecting huge fees for raising capital for Internet companies. The other side of the Merrill Lynch house was giving investment advice to individual clients, telling those individual clients that these Internet companies were the way to go with their money, encouraging them to buy the stock. This is not what these advisors were telling each other, though, in private e-mails and conversations that the attorney general of New York later found. What they were telling each other was these stocks were a joke; these stocks were a disaster. They were using words that should not be used in mixed company or on the House floor. This bill wants to take the quality of investment advice the New York attorney general alleged those people were receiving and offer it to the pensioners of this country. No advice should not be replaced with bad advice. The proposal would enshrine into the law, would legalize and legitimize the opportunity of unscrupulous advisors to offer advice which benefits them but not the pensioners to whom the advice is offered. Employees do need advice. They should be given a full array of choices. They should be made aware, and as the Democratic substitute does, made available as to how to pay for the offering and receipt of independent advice. One of the many flaws in the majority's bill is that it enshrines into law the practice of authorizing and permitting the giving of advice by people who have more to look out for themselves than for the pensioners to whom the advice is offered. For this and many other reasons the underlying bill should be defeated and the Democratic Miller substitute should be adopted.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes in support of the Miller substitute. Mr. Speaker, there is some confusion on the issue here of the competing proposals and how long someone is required to hold shares of stock contributed by an employer when that is the employer stock. I want to be very clear: The proposal that we support, the Democratic substitute, does call for a 3-year period, not a 1-year period as some groups outside of this body are alleging. It is a 3-year period. The Republican proposal, the underlying bill though, I want to be clear about what it means to a person who is in a 401(k) plan that has her or his employer's stock matched in that 401(k) plan. Under the underlying bill, it would be 5 years before an employee could completely divest himself or herself of that stock. So here is what this means: If you were working for a company and the company put matching shares of its stock into your 401(k), and the company started to slide downhill the way Enron slid downhill, and you decided the best thing for you to do was to get your retirement fund out of that stock, get it out of there so that you would not be losing your pension, under the Republican bill that we are amending it would be a 5-year process, 5 years, before you could get all of that stock out. It is phased out 20 percent, then 40 percent, then 60 percent, then 80 percent. I do not see why people should be required to wait 5 years. Next week will commemorate the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, April 15. The Republican proposal reminds me of the Titanic in this respect: When the Titanic was sinking, the wealthy people got off the ship in their lifeboats and the working class people were locked down below in steerage, unable to get off the boat as it was sinking. That very unfortunate proposal is carried out in the underlying bill. Frankly, there are those of us that believe 3 years is far too long, but in an attempt to compromise, to make sure we could draw as many people to support the proposal as we could, the Democratic plan talks about 3. I do not want any confusion about the fact that the bill that we are amending, the underlying plan, calls for at the beginning of the plan a 5-year period before someone can get completely off that sinking ship. That is wrong, and that is another good reason to support the Democratic substitute and oppose the underlying bill.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne), who is a strong voice for workers both in New Jersey and around the country. (Mr. PAYNE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time our side has left.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey), a valued member of the Committee who has valuable experience as a human rights executive. (Ms. WOOLSEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this bill because of what it does and what it does not do. I commend and thank the leadership of both parties for bringing us a bill that extends unemployment benefits, that provides meaningful incentives for people to invest in capital goods and get the business economy rolling again. I also support the bill because it is not nearly as large as the other plans that were before us just a few weeks and months ago. The looming problem in this economy is the budget deficit. This bill adds only marginally to the budget deficit in the short run, and I believe it will subtract from it in the long run. But that problem is not going away. We are once again going to run this government on borrowed money, I believe because of the unduly large tax cut enacted last summer. We have done a good job today in addressing the short-term problem, but we have a bigger job to do in the weeks and months ahead in addressing the looming train wreck with Social Security in the American economy because we are once again going to go back to the bad old days of the 1980s of running this government on borrowed money. Let us stimulate this economy today, but let us solve the long-term problems in the future.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, by a vote of 100 to nothing, the other body voted for a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits. The purpose of our act today is we want to bring that same proposal to the floor so we can vote on it as well, and extend unemployment benefits. We are going to hear that there will be an effort to do that later in the day put forth by the majority, and they have some things added on to it. What is wrong with that? Let me tell the Members what is wrong with the majority's health care scam that is added to the unemployment benefit extension. A person who has been out of work for 6 months and is about to lose his or her benefits, who has $1,000 in his or her checking account, here is how they get health care under the Republican plan. They are supposed to go out and pay $7,000 or more in premiums to buy a health insurance policy, and then wait until next year, when they file their income tax return and get $4,200 back as a credit. The Republican health insurance scam requires people to use dollars they do not have to pay a premium they cannot afford to get a tax credit they will not use until more than a year from now. That is a hoax, not a plan. The majority should join with us and defeat this previous question. Let us have a clean up-and-down vote on whether or not to do as 100 Senators did and extend unemployment benefits for America's unemployed for 13 weeks. Vote ``no'' on the previous question.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I recommend to my colleagues that you read some remarks by former Congressman Tom Evans of Delaware he delivered recently at the University of Delaware. Tom Evans, who played a key role in the passage of the Alaska Lands Act, sets forth compelling reasons why one of America's great treasures, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, should continue to be protected. I strongly agree with him on the need to preserve that great wilderness area and protect the wildlife there. There are much better and quicker ways to develop energy independence in America without oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, we should all oppose this amendment irrespective of our position for or against gun control. We should oppose this amendment because it is unconstitutional. It violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The underlying bill is a proper regulation of free speech. What is wrong with this amendment is that it segregates that regulation of free speech according to what you are saying. So this body is going to say if you speak about the second amendment, you have one set of rights; but if you speak about anything else, anything else, you do not have that same set of rights. On its face, on its face, this amendment violates the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution; and whether you are for gun control or against gun control, you should honor your oath to uphold the Constitution and oppose this amendment.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this very-well-thought-out amendment. I commend the author for her efforts in crafting what appears to be a very sensible approach to this issue. I would also say that this amendment rather distinguishes itself in the long line of amendments we are dealing with tonight, as I think it is a serious amendment to improve the legislation and not an attempt to scuttle it. Again, I think adjusting the hard-money contributions when one runs against a person with great wealth is fair, reasonable and entirely consistent with the underlying scheme, and I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the amendment.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this well-reasoned, well- thought-out legislation. I want to thank and commend the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Mrs. Mink), and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for their leadership in bringing this to the floor today. On December 20, I was among those who opposed this legislation. I did not do so on its merits. I did so because of the principle of defending the rights of the minority in this Chamber. The legislation the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) made reference to previously that was introduced by our colleague, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy), would have provided student loan forgiveness for the surviving spouses of heroes, police officers and firefighters and other heroes involved in the atrocities of September 11. That legislation is supported by the Republican leadership and the Democratic leadership of the committee, and I believe it is supported by every member of our committee; and it should have been brought to the floor under the suspension calendar of the House. It should have been brought immediately to the floor of the House. I hope, Mr. Speaker, that the leadership reconsiders its decision to deny that opportunity and brings it forward. Having said that, we now turn our attention to the legislation before us. It is worthy in three very important respects. First of all, it will mean lower interest rates for students and their families right now. It will make it more affordable to borrow money to go to school, and that is a good thing. Second, it will provide stability in the student loan system. We have an excellent system today that provides for competition between the direct student loan program and the bank-based private sector student loan program. As a result of this, students and their families and institutions get to choose the best offer, the best price, the best quality for themselves. Without this change, which assures the financial structure of the private side of the program, the private side of the program would be very much in jeopardy, and it is conceivable that private lenders would leave the system. That would be very disadvantageous to students around the country. Finally, the legislation is worthy because, as the chairman of the subcommittee said just a few minutes ago, it provides some certainty for families planning for paying for higher education by locking in today's relatively low interest rates well into the future, and making them permanent. For all of these reasons, I would urge both Republican and Democratic Members to follow suit, follow the example of the other body, and approve this legislation.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I know that the unemployed people of our country need help and our economy needs help, and I think there is broad agreement on that tonight. Where there is disagreement is over the two-thirds of the money in this bill that is not spent this year, Mr. Speaker; $162 billion that does not even get spent this year. It has nothing to do with stimulating the economy. If we have learned any lesson in the last 30 years, it is that when we run the Federal Government by borrowing money, we destroy jobs and ruin the economy. This bill is as if the last 10 years never happened around here, because here we go again. This bill is going to take a quarter of $1 trillion and borrow it from the Social Security trust fund. Two-thirds of that money has nothing to do with what is going to happen in the next 12 months. It is simply going to run up the deficit, destroy jobs, and re-create the malignancy that burdened this economy and the people of this country for so long. We could make an agreement in the short run, but this bill does not do it. It should be opposed.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, the legislation before us has great merit. It would stabilize the student loan program, and I intend to work as hard as I can to see that it is enacted. However, another piece of legislation that has great merit and bipartisan support is, in my judgment, being arbitrarily withheld from the floor. The gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. McCarthy) has worked very hard on this. She has had the active cooperation of the chairman of our committee and the subcommittee chairman, for which I commend them both. However, as she said just a moment ago, the minority has only certain rights. She and the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) have worked diligently throughout the day and, frankly, in days prior to this, to try to bring this legislation before the body. In my judgment, an arbitrary and unreasonable decision has precluded them from doing so. In the few hours that remain before this vote is scheduled for floor consideration, there is an opportunity to do something about that. I would urge the Speaker and the leadership of the majority party to take that under advisement so we can move forward two pieces of meritorious bipartisan legislation.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce the Retirement Enhancement Act of 2001. The Retirement, Enhancement Act of 2001 consists of two bills, one amending the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the other amending the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). These bills are the result of my work as the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations, which last Congress and earlier this year held a number of bipartisan hearings to consider improvements to ERISA. The Subcommittee heard from a wide variety of witnesses representing pension participants, employers, and financial advisors. They presented us with a variety of proposals to improve the retirement security of American workers. The Retirement Enhancement Act seeks to take the best of these contributions, and couple them with other pension provisions that I have either advocated or supported in the past, Joining with me as cosponsors of the Retirement Enhancement Act of 2001 are numerous members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, including Representatives Miller, Kildee, Owens, Payne, Mink, Scott, Woolsey, Rivers, Hinojosa, Tierney, Kind, Sanchez, Ford, Kucinich, Holt, Solis and McCollum. They share my belief that enactment of these bills will improve workers' access to and adequacy of needed retirement benefits. Since the enactment of ERISA, the number of Americans who participate in a pension plan has nearly doubled from 38.4 million in 1975. While this growth is considerable, it still leaves about half of the workforce without access to a pension plan through their employer. Both the General Accounting Office and Congressional Research Service have completed studies analyzing pension coverage in the United States. The studies found that approximately 53 per cent of workers, roughly 68 million people, lacked a pension plan in 1998. About 39 per cent of those without coverage worked for an employer that did not sponsor a plan, while 14 per cent lacked coverage because their company's plan did not include them. These bills seek to eliminate the remaining weaknesses in ERISA and lay the groundwork to help those not covered by an employer pension. These bills seek to improve pension coverage and adequacy, Under these bills, employers that sponsor plans would be required to offer pension coverage to all employees who meet current minimum eligibility requirements such as completion of one year of employment. These bills also improve coverage for part-time workers who represent one of the largest groups without pension coverage. Women represent 70 percent of the part-time workforce. With the ever-changing, workforce, it is also important that we decrease the vesting period for workers in defined contribution plans. For workers who will have many employers during their working, lives, we need to ensure that they will earn pension benefits that will benefit them in retirement. The bill reduces pension vesting from 5 to 3 years for defined contribution plans. The Retirement Enhancement Act seeks to expand pension availability to those workers without it. One of the innovative ways in which it would do so is to create a model small employer group pension plan into which small employers could buy in with minimal administrative responsibilities. The Departments of Labor and Treasury would work with associations or financial institutions to establish and advertise these model plans so that employers and employees would know that easy and accessible pension options exist. The Retirement Enhancement Act includes important pension protections for women. These bills establish a 75 per cent joint and survivor annuity option that would provide surviving spouses greater benefits in retirement. It provides enhanced protection to divorced spouses' pension rights and improves spousal information rights. These bills would also allow for time taken off from work under the Family and Medical Leave Act to count toward pension participation and vesting requirements. The Act improves ERISA's safeguards for the investment of pension plan monies. It creates an expedited prohibited transaction exemption approval process under which plans would be able to more easily and quickly provide participants with new investment products. It does so, however, without weakening participant protections. It permits employers to provide qualified investment advice, including self- interested advice provided advisors meet minimum qualifications, adequate notice is provided, employees have an independent option and also effective remedies are available to employees for breach of the advisors fiduciary duties. This will be extremely helpful to those workers in defined contribution pension plans who bear the primary responsibility for their pension plan investment decisions. In recent months tens of thousands of participants in defined contribution plans have suffered great loss when their company stock price dramatically declined, most notably in the case of Enron. Too many participants have had their retirement savings effectively wiped out. The Retirement Enhancement Act would give pension participants enhanced rights to diversify their employer pension contributions. The bill would require all employers to notify employees of their right to diversify employer contributions and would require employers to diversify employer contributions. The Retirement Enhancement Act of 2001 improves access to pension information and strengthens enforcement mechanisms. It would require that plan participants regularly receive statements apprising them of the status of their earned pension benefits. Pension plans would also have to provide more detailed financial information about their earnings and investments. These bills would improve the current pension auditing system by requiring accountants to conduct full scope audits and report irregularities to the Department of Labor. The bill includes important incentives to increase meaningful access to pension plans for low and moderate wage earners. It makes refundable the new tax credit for individuals who make pension contributions either to an IRA or 401 (k) plan and it also includes a tax credit to small businesses that would subsidize 50 per cent of their pension contributions for the first 3 years of a plan. The bills create an alternate dispute resolution system to resolve benefit disputes. The Department of Labor, along with dispute resolution organizations, would develop an early neutral evaluation program. This would allow for participants to receive benefits in a timely manner instead of after years of litigation, The bills also strengthen ERISA's remedies to ensure that participants have meaningful access to court, and that the courts can adequately remedy violations of the law. Finally, the Retirement Enhancement Act of 2001 requires the timely distribution of defined contribution cash-out amounts, which would have to be made within 60 days of an employee's termination. It permits employees to work longer without being required to start pension receipt by delaying the minimum distribution of benefits from age 70\1/ 2\ to 75. Furthermore, for workers who are involuntarily terminated, it permits them to borrow against their pension earnings in order to pay for health or job training expenses. Mr. Speaker, it is now time for the Congress to build on what was started with the enactment of ERISA in 1974, and take additional steps to ensure retirement security for our workforce. Advances in medical technology, environmental protection, nutrition, and improved living standards give us reason to believe that Americans are going to live longer lives. Whether the quality of these lives, after retirement, is good or not, will depend upon the existence, nature, and security of each person's pension plan. Because employers are rapidly shifting to the use of employee-directed pension accounts, more and more workers will be making decisions that are critical to their future financial health. I believe that the Retirement Enhancement Act of 2001 will help make those decisions easier, and make the benefits of those decisions more secure. I look forward to working with my colleagues and the pension community to continue to improve these bills and advance their consideration.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and of the conference report. The work that has been done on this bill by the President, by the leaders of our efforts, the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller) are to be commended, as well as the efforts of Senator Kennedy and Senator Gregg. We will hear more about the overall themes of this bill during the general debate. I wanted to extend my appreciation to these leaders for including in this legislation two initiatives which have great importance to me that I have worked on throughout this process. The first is a provision that will permit for the first time Title IV money to be used to broaden prekindergarten opportunities for 3, 4 and 5 year olds across the country. The evidence is overwhelming that children who receive a high quality prekindergarten education perform better throughout their school careers and throughout their lives. For the first time, because of the inclusion of this provision, we will be able to reach more children. Second, we have had an epidemic of school violence in our country which we all regret. One of the ways that has been proven successful to deal with school violence is peer mediation programs among students. Because of a provision that is in this bill, we have been able to provide for the use of Safe and Drug Free Schools money to promote the use of peer mediation programs among students across the country so they may learn to talk about their differences and resolve them before those differences spill over to bloodshed and violence in our schools. There are many good things in this legislation. I am appreciative of the cooperation of the bipartisan leadership in including these two initiatives in the bill. I would urge my colleagues to support both the rule and the bill.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I begin by offering my thanks and appreciation to the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), our ranking member, for their very gifted leadership; for the diligence of my Republican and Democratic colleagues on this conference; for the professionalism of the staff on both sides that did such an outstanding and hard-working job; and especially to Matt Walker of my own staff. Mr. Speaker, this is an achievement that presents us with both a golden opportunity and a great responsibility. To understand that golden opportunity, we need to understand what life has been like for one of the children who have had the misfortune of attending one of the dark and often violent places called schools where not much learning has gone on in recent years in America. When that child fails year after year, or when that child is failed by her school or his school year after year, they just move on to third grade or fourth grade or fifth grade, and then fifth grade becomes junior high school, and then too often junior high school leads to the streets or to a drug rehab center or to a dead end job, or to a morgue. These schools have failed these children year after year, and this bill I believe can make a great difference because this bill says that America's taxpayers will no longer sit back and permit that failure to occur. If a school continues to fail its children year after year, something is going to happen. Instead of spending money on public relations for the board of education or a new hire who is the Mayor's brother-in-law, the money is going to go to tutors and technology and summer school and after-school programs. And if it does not, something is going to change. The people who refused to make that change will be replaced and removed, and that child will have a new opportunity. We have a great responsibility that accompanies that golden opportunity, because we have to make this work. We have given the Department of Education and the States and the teachers and the school districts and the students of this country tools to make this happen, but we need to make sure that it works; that the excuses are cast aside and the attempts to evade this new responsibility are not tolerated. Mr. Speaker, this conference, of which I have been honored to be a part, has done a great job to write what I believe is a strong law; but we all have ahead of us a new responsibility to make sure it works. When it does, I believe people will look back on this day as a day that education changed for the least fortunate students in this country and became more than just a promise, but became a reality in their lives and in the lives of our Nation. I would urge an overwhelming ``yes'' vote for this great piece of legislation, and again thank our leadership for this bill.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend for yielding me time. I rise not to in any way be unfair to the people of New York. I rise to support this amendment to be fair to people throughout this country. If we stand in Jersey City, New Jersey, we can look across the river and see Lower Manhattan. It is about a 5-minute boat ride from Jersey City to Lower Manhattan. The absurdity of the underlying bill if we do not pass the Miller amendment is this: a worker who lives in Jersey City who lost her job or his job on September 11 because their business was destroyed in the attack, will get no additional unemployment benefits or health benefits. But a worker on the other side of the river who happens to live in Lower Manhattan, would be entitled to get additional unemployment or health benefits if the money is used for that purpose. A river should not divide us. This bill should not divide us. We should not have to choose between honoring our promise to the people of New York City and honoring our obligation to unemployed people all across this country. The rule for this bill should have permitted us to address both of those concerns. It did not. Fairness dictates, however, that we address the concerns of unemployed Americans across the Hudson River and around the country and adopt the Miller amendment so that unemployed Americans everywhere can receive fair treatment from this Congress tonight. I urge a vote in favor of the Miller amendment.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this conference report, and I would like to thank and congratulate the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) for their really diligent work in making this happen. I particularly commend my friend, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske), for his courageous fight for many of the principles in this legislation. This will not solve all of America's aviation safety problems. We have to be diligent, continue to come back to this again and again and again. But it is an example of the best this Congress has to offer, people implementing practical solutions that will be workable solutions, that will make our skies safer and our people more confident right away. This represents the best practices of those who know the most about the industry. Again, to the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young) and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), in particular, we are thankful for this work. We promise that we will stand by their sides as we implement this law and make good things happen once again in the future. Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote in favor of the conference report.

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The arguments we have heard against the substitute that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) and I have put forward essentially boil down to two arguments: one is that employers would get sued if the substitute were adopted; and the second is that investment advice would be too expensive for investment advice firms to give if the substitute were adopted. Each of these arguments is incorrect. Liability protection provisions in this substitute are essentially identical for employers as those that are in the base bill. If an employer does not engage in any independent act of negligence or illegality, the employer is not liable under the substitute, as is the case in the base bill. In fact, the substitute adds provisions, adds protections to employers which do not exist under present law to provide a safe harbor for employers who hire investment advisors. So the argument that this somehow is going to unleash a flood of litigation against employers is reminiscent of the similar false point made under the patients' bill of rights debate and it is equally wrong. The second argument that somehow or another the expense that is going to be imposed upon advisor firms is going to preclude them from giving advice is equally wrong. It is not very expensive to tell an employee that there is somewhere else he or she can go to get advice. It took me about 4 seconds to say it. It would not take much longer for the advisor to say it, either. It is not very expensive to say to an investor that before you put your money in this fund, you ought to know that I as your advisor make more money if you put the money in the fund than if you do not. It took me about 4 seconds to say it, and it would take about 4 seconds for the advisor to say it as well. The additional cost that would be imposed upon investment advice firms I am sure would be gladly borne by those firms in order to win the commissions which they rightfully earn by giving the advice in the first place. Our substitute, I believe, covers the key grounds. It says that a conflicted advisor must give full, timely and understandable disclosure. It says that every person giving advice, not most people giving advice but every person giving advice must be duly qualified and accountable to lose his or her license if they breach their fiduciary duty. It says that every person receiving advice from a conflicted advisor must know that there are other choices to whom the person can turn that are not conflicted. And it says that if a fiduciary duty is breached, if bad advice is given and a pensioner or worker suffers, there is somewhere to go to be made whole, not to get back most of what you lost or some of what you lost but to get back all of what you lost if your advisor has broken the law. Our substitute deserves the support of Members on both sides of the aisle. We respectfully ask its adoption. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Ford).

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey). (Ms. WOOLSEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. ANDREWS

Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this piece of legislation is about a person who is at the age of 30 or 40 in his or her life and starting to think about retirement, hopefully sooner than that, and they find they have a few thousand dollars in an account, in an IRA or a 401(k). They pick up the newspaper and they see wild fluctuations in the Dow Jones average, and they hear from some of their neighbors that they are doing great in their investments, and from others they are not doing so well; and they realize they need some help. They need some good sound advice as to what to do with this very crucial asset. Both sides of this debate agree that the present situation is not very good; that the advice does come from people who are like Bob at the coffee shop, the friend of the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), someone who is not really qualified, that people get advice through hearsay, and we think something should be done about that. The proposal the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) and myself are putting forward now, we think, is a more sensible way to address this need. We think that when this individual goes to get advice as to what to do with his or her money, that there ought to be some choices of the advisor. We do not rule out the prospect of an advisor who has an interest in a fund that he or she is advising about. We do say, though, that if such advice is going to be given, if the person giving the advice has a vested interest in our hypothetical investor putting his or her money in one fund as opposed to another, if there is a higher commission or some other gain that derives to that advisor, we say the following: Each time a decision is made by the investor as to what to do, the advisor has to tell the investor in plain language, in plain math, in an understandable way what the nature of the advisor's interest is. The advisor has to say to the investor, You know, if you put your money in fund A instead of fund B, I make a little more money than I otherwise would, and you ought to know that before you make the decision. Our substitute says that the person giving that advice must be qualified, and not most of the time but all of the time. The person giving the advice must have proper education. The person giving the advice must be part of a regulated industry, whether he or she is a broker or some other form of advisor. And if the person gives advice that is in violation of law, that is a violation of what we call the fiduciary duty, then the person must lose their license, and not most of the time, but all of the time, to make sure that the advisor is properly qualified. Our substitute says that there must be some mechanism so that when our investor goes to ask for advice, and the advice may be given by a conflicted advisor, by someone having an interest in one or more of the funds, the employee should also be told that there is at least one other choice; that if they do not want to take advice from this person who has an interest in some of the funds that he or she is advising about, there is somewhere else that individual can go, to a person who has no interest whatsoever in the advice that he or she is giving. At least one other option on the menu so that the investor knows that there is somewhere else to go. Finally, this substitute differs from the underlying bill because the substitute provides that if the advisor gives advice that is so bad that it is a violation of the law, so bad that it subverts and violates the fiduciary duty of that advisor, the investor can be made whole. He or she can get their pension money back, get back any lost profits or gains they would have had while they were waiting to get it back, and can get the cost of recovering those funds back in attorneys' fees as well. The investor does not have to wait for some bureaucracy in Washington to take action on his or her behalf; they do not have to hope that they can get represented in a case that is not worth very much money to an attorney, but worth an awful lot to them. They have the ability to be made whole. The proposal that the gentleman from New York and I are putting forward provides for more advice for people who need it, but it does so in a way that is careful and it does so in a way that does not subvert and discard the 27-year history of the ERISA statute that has provided safer pensions and sounder investments for our citizens. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members of both sides to consider this proposal, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.