George Miller

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee). (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker and Members of the House, it is rather interesting to see my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle ask us whether we know that the minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Apparently, they have just discovered that fact. I would ask them did they know that the minimum wage was $5.15 an hour 10 years ago and 9 years ago and 8 years ago and 7 years ago and 6 years ago and 5 years ago and 4 years ago? It was $5.15 an hour and you never raised a finger. You never raised a finger to help these individuals. We introduced a bill every year. I have asked for hearings in my committee every year to raise the minimum wage because these people have been stuck at $5.15 an hour. You control the House, you control the Senate, you control the White House. You could never find time for these people. You found time for the richest people in the country, but you never found time for the people at $5.15 an hour. Now, as your political fortunes change, you get a letter from the most vulnerable members of your caucus, and you discover that people are working for $5.15 an hour. But even then you cannot play it straight. No, the only way you can do this bill for the people whom you now recognize need help, and they have needed it for many years, is to put a poison pill into the minimum wage increase of the estate tax cut, knowing that you will send it off to the Senate and it will be embroiled in the 18 days that we have left in this session and there will be no increase in the minimum wage. You could vote for the motion to recommit. The extenders are not controversial. And apparently the minimum wage is not controversial on your side. Although when a clean minimum wage passed on the Health and Human Services appropriations bill, it came to a grinding stop, and your Speaker said we are not going to have a minimum wage increase, and your majority leader says, I haven't voted for one of these and I have not supported it for 25 years, with great pride. Did he know they were working for $5.15 an hour all that time? If he had his way, they would have been working for $3.15 an hour over the last 25 years. So tonight what are we presented with? The appearance of a minimum wage increase, but it is really about driving the estate tax. But it is about driving the estate tax into a hostile environment in the Senate, where you will argue and you will argue and you will argue and the session will end, and those same people that are working for $5.15 an hour today will be working for $5.15 an hour next year and next month. As much compassion as you felt for them, you decided they ought to wait longer to get $7.25 in the bill you presented. As much compassion as you felt for them, you decided if they work for tips, you would take away their wages in the States that Mr. Inslee pointed out, in Washington and California and elsewhere. They would lose their wages under this bill. So I think this newfound compassion is somewhat shallow, somewhat less than sincere for these people because you could not find time for them over the last 5 years. You could not find time to deal with their problems of working all year long and ending up with $10,700 and being in poverty. You could not find time for them when the price of gasoline went up and the price of rent went up and the price of education went up and the price of milk went up. You could not find time then. But all of a sudden, you can find time now, but only, only if you can stick it in with relief for the richest people in America, relief that you know will not happen in this legislation. And once again, these people will be denied. They will be denied at the hands of the Republican leadership that has been hostile to the minimum wage from the moment they came to this House of Representatives. They had never had any intention of supporting it, they had never voted for it, and it will not happen again. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I am in its present form.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of discussion and there appears to be almost unanimity in this Congress that we should be raising the minimum wage. But it also is very clear from this discussion that if we proceed with the bill that is before us offered by the majority in this House, that we will not accomplish transferring that legislation into the law of the land, because that legislation has very little chance of passing in the time remaining in this House. We offer this motion to recommit because in this motion we offer the minimum wage, we offer the extenders that are present in the bill that is before us, and the provisions for coal mining. These are important, they are widely supported in the Congress; we voted on them many times, and they are important for all the reasons people cited here today. But, most importantly, it will allow us to have in effect an up-or-down vote on the minimum wage because it will not have the poison pill of the estate tax, all of the costs, all of the deficit that is created by that legislation. It will not bring that controversy to this chance, the first chance in 9 years to raise the minimum wage for those people working at the federally mandated minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. We have now seen that many, many Members of this Congress have decided that that is no longer acceptable in this country, that we cannot mandate under Federal law that that is the minimum wage for these people. And so we have an opportunity to change it, but the only real opportunity to change it comes with the motion to recommit, where we can clean this legislation up, we can take the poison pill out, we can take the deficit spending out, we can take the privilege out of this legislation, and we can address the important priorities of this Nation. That is what we should be doing at this point in this session of this Congress. That is what we should be doing at 5 minutes after 1 o'clock in the morning. We should be addressing the important priorities of this Nation, and we should do it in the manner that ensures, that almost guarantees the opportunity to pass the minimum wage so that these people can help to lift themselves out of poverty, help to be able to provide the wherewithal for their families, and be able to continue in their employment. We don't have to go the route that the Republicans went with the minimum wage where these people have to wait another 18 months. We don't have to go through this business of taking away the wages from people who earn tips. We don't have to do any of that. We can have a clean minimum wage, we can have clean extenders, clean coal provisions, and we can go about our way and take care of the priorities of this Nation. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman for yielding and also thank her for all of her work on this legislation, along with Chairman Boehner and Chairman McKeon and Chairman Castle. And, of course, with the diligent work of our staffs on both sides of the aisle, I think we have crafted a measure that maintains the integrity of the program while responding to the changes in the career and the technical education programs across the country. While the President has chosen to put forward a proposal to dismantle this critical program, we saw an opportunity to make high school matter for many young people, offer college students pathways into productive employment, and new hope for displaced homemakers and workers reentering the workforce. The conference report before us signals that we will not retreat on our investment in career education and training. The global economy demands a high skilled workforce, and the Perkins Act, has been instrumental in building today's workforce and the workforce of the future. Today, these programs are changing in the face of secondary and postsecondary education, and they equip America's workforce with the skills they need to compete in a global economy. More important, career tech programs acknowledge that we must be preparing students and adults for high wage, high skill jobs that exist in this new economy. To do this, however, we need a system that is challenging and academically sound and a system expands the secondary and postsecondary programs, offering students a pathway toward those kinds of careers. I am pleased that the conference agreement mirrors the recommendations we have heard, that we must pay more attention to math and science and technology to increase our competitiveness. We also know that this is what the high paying jobs require, with these advanced skills. The conference agreement continues the Tech-Prep program. Tech-Prep has been a model of career and technical education with demonstrated outcomes. In California, students, teachers, and administrators benefit from the connections made between secondary and postsecondary programs, and career and technical programs. Successful Tech-Prep programs offer a challenging and rigorous coursework at the high school level that is coordinated with postsecondary career technical programs. And Tech-Prep students obtain better paying jobs because they have the academic and technical credentials that businesses want for their workforce. We made important strides in the area of professional development. This conference agreement strengthens the instructional connection between academic and career technical programs. We heard from numerous teachers that successful career tech programs allow academic and vocational teachers to develop curriculums together to teach together so that students can apply the academic content to the real world context. This conference agreement contains new measures of accountability for career and technical education systems. I do not doubt that some programs may have difficulties in meeting this new system. However, there have been too many programs that have chosen the status quo, to the detriment of our workforce competitiveness. Successful career and technical education programs produce students that outperform their counterparts and make higher wages. We must demand that all programs work toward this same goal. The accountability systems move us in that direction. I want to point out two other areas where the conference agreement improves upon the House passed bill: Graduation and career plans. Under the agreement, local programs may use Perkins funds to create graduation and career plans for students. These plans can be tools for students and parents to help focus the student on the student's future goals, making sure that the actions that we take will lead to the outcome they desire. And, also, the special populations and nontraditional careers. The conference agreement also strengthens the provisions, and the gentlewoman from California has been a hawk on these issues for her entire career on this committee, and that is to improve the opportunities for women and men to gain access to nontraditional careers, and ensures that displaced homemakers and individuals with disabilities have access to career and technical education. In this global economy, we can't afford to waste the potential of any of our people, and these provisions will help ensure that that doesn't happen. Mr. Chairman, the Perkins Act is a critical workforce development tool, and the bill before us represents a sound career and technical education policy. I want to thank our staff again for their efforts in bringing this conference agreement together, and I look forward to a quick passage of this conference report. And I also want to comment that this continues a long tradition in this committee where we have been able to work on a bipartisan basis on the most critical education issues confronting this country, both in the development of high performing students and professional individuals and high performing career opportunities for those individuals, and I want to thank all of my colleagues for their efforts on this legislation and urge a passage of this conference report.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I rise yet again with another motion to instruct the conferees of H.R. 2830, the pension bill currently in conference. These repeated motions have become necessary in light of the failure of the Republican conferees to include all conferees and to hear all voices. The House Democrats have been locked out of this conference since last March, so we have come to the floor again and again with motions to instruct that would press the conferees to protect America's workers and retirees from some of the worst proposals in these bills now being considered in that conference committee. Again and again, the House has voted overwhelmingly to support these instructions but the Republican conferees don't seem to be getting the message, or they don't seem to care. So I am calling on my colleagues to speak again, and this time a little louder. This is a new motion that would provide greater protections for workers' pensions in five critical areas. First. Protecting older workers' benefits in the cash balance conversion when pension plans convert from the defined benefit plan. Two. Ensuring that airline pilots do not see unfair cuts to their PBGC, the Pension Benefits Guarantee Corporation, because the FAA required them to retire at age 60. Three. Providing stretch-out payments for an airline industry that has been shaken by 9/11 and rising fuel costs. Four. Allowing for the alternative funding agreements when a plan is in trouble so that we can avoid the dumping of pension plans like what happened with the United Airlines debacle. Five. Providing for more equal treatment of executive and worker pensions. If we are going to restrict workers' pensions when a plan is underfunded, we should also restrict the executives that, in many instances, are responsible for that underfunding of the pension plans. After all, it is the executives who decide whether or not to fund the pension plan. From all the reports we have received to date, it sounds like the conferees are not moving to include these items in the conference report, despite the fact that the House has repeatedly instructed the conferees to include these worker protections. Let us go through these one by one and let us understand that this is about the protection of workers, it is about the protection of retirees, and it is about the protection of their families, because it is about the pension plans that these workers now have as a matter of their bargaining, their agreements, and their contracts with their employers. What we have now seen, and what too many workers have seen and what the American public has witnessed, is that employer after employer is announcing to workers that they are going to forego the support for a defined benefit plan, they are going to forego the support for health care benefits, and workers now see they are trapped. In many instances, those changes, those decisions by the employer snag workers who have no ability to restore that retirement nest egg that they are going to lose when the employer decides that they are going to terminate the pension plan. That is why we are offering this motion to instruct, to try to protect the retirement nest egg of hard-working Americans and their families from being devastated by the decisions of the employers on the termination or the dumping of the pension plans into the PBGC. So let us walk through what we are trying to do here. First. The protection for older workers in a cash balance conversion. This motion to instruct would have the conferees in the Senate make sure they prohibit against the discrimination of older workers by the practice of offsetting the earned benefit plans they have now with the new cash balance plans, and to make sure that we understand what the GAO has told us; that unless we provide some transition protection, almost all workers could lose up to 50 percent of their expected pension benefits. Listen to that again. Almost all workers could lose up to almost 50 percent of their expected pension benefits. Again, those older workers, 50, 55, 60 years old, will lose the most. Those are the same workers who have the least ability to save more money for their retirement, to earn more money for their retirement. They will take the biggest hit. We are asking that at a minimum, you protect employees that are 5 years away from retirement because they do not have the ability to secure additional funds for their retirement. It means a dramatic diminishment of their the retirement plans, of their financial resources for their retirement, for their health care, for the sustaining of their families. That is why it is so important to understand that. This is what responsible employers have done, whether it is Verizon, or Honeywell, or Wells Fargo Bank or CSX Railroad. But other employers have chosen not do this, and now they want the protection of the law as they take away these benefits of the older workers. It is also what the Congress chose to do. We chose to provide a transition for Members of Congress as we changed the retirement plan of Congress to the TSP plan as opposed to a defined benefit plan. If it is good enough for Congress, why isn't it good enough for these workers and for their families? Obviously, when the Members of Congress have been asked to vote on this, they have voted overwhelmingly. In 2002, an amendment to take care of these older workers passed 328-121; in 2003, it passed 258-160; in 2004, it passed 237-162. The motion to instruct this past April, the House voted 248-178 to tell the conferees to protect these older workers. Unfortunately, either the conferees are hard of hearing or they simply don't care about these older workers, because it appears that when the conference report comes back in the next day or two on the pension bill, these older workers will not be protected. Second, the case of the airlines. The motion to instruct would have the conferees agree to the Senate provision ensuring that pilots get their full pension guaranteed from the Pension Guarantee Corporation. They get their full pension, for those who were required to retire at an early age. So you have pilots who were required, under Federal law, to retire at age 60. The pension plan was terminated, through no fault of the pilots, in many cases because of 9/11 or higher fuel costs, and now they are being punished because the Pension Guarantee Corporation will only give you a full benefit if you retire at age 65. They had no ability to retire at age 65 because Federal law kept them from doing so. We think that, in fact, we ought to protect those employees. And the motion would limit the treatment of those pension plans to those that were terminated after September 11, 2001. The fix is needed now. United airline pilots are seeing their pensions cut by tens of thousands of dollars each year under you the pension guarantee rules. The retirement nest eggs have been devastated, but they have been twice, once by the unfair dumping of the pension plans and the PBGC by United, and now because the law says that they cannot have those full benefits because they retired before 65. In a motion this past March, the House voted 265-158 to instruct the conferees to give these pilots their full guarantee. Once again, the conferees either can't here the House of Representatives, they don't care about the House of Representatives, or they don't care about these workers, because they are not choosing to protect these pilots to the extent to which they should be. Third, we deal with the question of the airlines. We all know that airlines have been hurt by skyrocketing fuel prices since 9/11. They have been hurt by a lack of travel immediately after 9/11, and we have seen one airline after another go into bankruptcy. We have seen United Airlines terminate its pension plans and dump $10 billion of liability onto the PBGC, its workers, its retirees and the taxpayers. We have seen the U.S. Airways dump its pension plan, and we have read how Delta is now seeking to dump its pension plan. It would be devastating to hundreds of thousands of workers across this Nation if more airlines were permitted to dump their plans into the PBGC. These provisions that we are asking the conferees to impose give the airlines the ability to keep their plans going by stretching out their payments over 20 years instead of 7 years. And these provisions should be made available to all the airlines, not just a select few airlines. They should be available to those airlines that have frozen their plans, as well as those that meet the requirements of the Senate bill to keep their plans running. In March, the motion to instruct, the House voted 265-158 to provide the airlines with these critical reforms, with this lifeline for their economic health and the well-being of their workers. But the conferees so far haven't heard us and we need to speak louder. Fourth, the alternative funding agreements. The motion to instruct would have the conferees agree to the Senate provisions, which passed 97-2, designed to prevent the pension plan dumping. These provisions allow the PBGC, the Treasury Secretary to enter into an alternative funding agreement with an employer if its pension plan is in danger of being terminated. If workers and retirees are facing the destruction of their pension plans, Congress should give the PBGC and the Treasury Departments the flexibility to work out alternatives to termination. If such alternatives to simply dumping the plan were available during the United Airline crisis, the largest pension termination in history, it may have been averted. A lot more needs to be done in this area so that we don't see just the callous dumping into the bankruptcy of the pension plans by these corporations that devastates their workers and their retirees. Fifth, and maybe this is one of the more serious ones, and that is a question of executive compensation. This motion to instruct would have the conferees agree to the Senate provision, again, passed 97-2, on executive compensation that would treat workers and executive pensions equally. Under the House bills, workers pension benefits are restricted if a pension falls below 80 percent funding. But what we see is there is no benefit on the executives unless it falls less than 60 percent funding. What we are saying is what the President of the United States, Mr. Bush, said during the Enron catastrophe, what is good for the captain is good for the crew. Once again, it is the executives that make decisions about funding these pension plans. But if they fall below 80 percent, the workers get restricted, but the executives continue to get their pensions, to get their benefits, to get all of the executive perks in that operation. We think that that ought to change. We think it is very clear that the executives, what they have done, in many instances, they ensure their pension plans outside of the bankruptcy system. So as they take the company into bankruptcy, they are guaranteed that they will get a life time pension worth millions of dollars. The workers get bankruptcy and get devastated and lose half of their benefits if they go to the Pension Guarantee Corporation. We believe the President is right. What is good for the captain is good for the crew, and that we ought to do this. Again, this past May, in a motion to instruct, the House voted 299- 125 to instruct these conferees. And what do you believe is going to happen? Apparently, the conferees are going to again ignore that vote. They are going to ignore the will of this House. They are going to ignore the will of the American people to have equity and fairness in the treatment of executives and workers during the troubled times for pension plans. So this motion to instruct is to take those five areas and to instruct the conferees at this 11th hour to deal with the fairness and the equity in the Pension Reform Bill to make sure that hardworking Americans don't have to crash to the floor, lose their homes, lose their retirement, lose their health care as we restructure pensions, and to make sure that we do treat the million dollar a year or the $10 million or the $20 million, $50 million a year executive, that we treat them the same as we treat the workers. Very few workers in this country have any say in whether or not these pension plans are underfunded. We saw that in the case of Enron. They were running downstairs telling the employees to buy the Enron stock, and they were running upstairs and selling their stock into the market because they knew the company was going to collapse. We think people ought to be treated fairly. They ought to be treated equally and clearly, clearly, we ought not to discriminate against older workers. That is what this motion to instruct does. Hopefully, when we send it, this motion to instruct, later this evening, the conference committee will hear us. They will hear the American people. They will quit ignoring the American people. They will quit dealing just with the special interests inside the Beltway, and doing what is good for the special interests, as opposed to what is good for the American public, what is good for the retirement systems in this country, what is good for the economy in this country, and what is fair to the workers and to their families. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, my colleague on the other side keeps saying that this is somehow a partisan charade to score points. There are just a little over 200 Members of the Democratic Party in this Congress, and these votes have carried 258, 308, 299, 237. Clearly, there is bipartisan agreement that as we write this pension bill, as we deal with pension reform, we ought to make an effort to try to deal with the plight of these workers in the fairest possible way we can. Let us look again quickly at what we are trying to do here. We are trying, one, to protect older workers who have a very limited ability to gather additional economic resources as they end their work years, to make up for a dramatic cut in their pension plans. All we are saying is that those workers ought to be protected, those who are 5 years away from the pension plan. Not a radical proposal. Not a partisan proposal. It passed the Senate 97-2. By an overwhelming bipartisan vote, we have asked the conferees to invoke that measure. We have also tried to say that those airline pilots that were forced to retire at age 60 due to Federal law, a Federal law that we are now considering changing to 65, but because of the bankruptcy of the company and the dumping of the plan by United and others into the PBGC, those pilots ought not to be harmed because they had no ability to reach 65 in their employment. The Federal law made them quit, and they ought not to be harmed in that situation. They may have never been harmed but for 9/11, but for the run up in fuel prices. They didn't do anything wrong, but they find themselves taking a double hit through the bankruptcy and through the PBGC rules. Then we said let us try to save the airline industry. Let us stretch this out. For those plans, mind you, they have frozen their pension plans. They comply with the requirements of the Senate bill, and we have said let us give them time to recover their economic health and hopefully save these pension plans. We do not know yet, but again on a bipartisan basis overwhelmingly, the House voted to do that. Then we said let us make sure that we exhaust all of the remedies before we dump these pension plans onto the taxpayers. Let us make sure that we have exercised all of the effort, that we have bargained in good faith, that we have searched every way to avoid this from becoming a taxpayer liability. Again, passing 97-2, the Senate went in that direction and we didn't. They refused those amendments to the legislation. And, finally, the issue of basic fairness, one that so struck the people of this Nation when they saw how Enron manipulated the pension systems, how they manipulated the stock sales to those pension systems by the executives, and, finally, how they manipulated the company into the downward spiral of bankruptcy and people lost their entire livelihoods. This bill says that, as Mr. Kucinich pointed out, if this plan is not at least 80 percent funded, you can provide no new benefits to the employees no matter what the reason for that underfunding is; but unless it is 60 percent underfunded, you can keep providing benefits to the executives. There is just a fundamental element of fairness. And again I think by over 258 votes, on a bipartisan basis, the House sent these instructions to the conferees. This is part of the legislative process. I am here because this is a privileged motion. We recognize the need to communicate from the full House to the conferees on measures that we continue to favor as the conference committee goes forward, and we have done that. But the fact of the matter is that now it appears, certainly from newspaper reports, which I wouldn't know because we have been shut out of this conference committee. The Republicans do not conference with the Democrats in the House. They do not honor that democratic principle. They do not honor that democratic history. So we only know what we have been told through the grapevine. We know in talking to the Democratic and Republican Senators, and we know a little bit by what we read in the press, and it appears that, in fact, in each and every one of these points where the House has spoken with an overwhelming voice to protect the pensions of workers, of retirees, and of their families, that each and every one of these is going to be disregarded by the conferees. This is a last attempt to try to bring some openness to this conference, to try to bring some bipartisan participation to this conference committee, and to bring the will of the House, which I think in these cases when we are hearing about pensions, when you go home and you talk to your constituents and you have your town hall meetings, you see how anxious people are about their health care benefits, about their retirement benefits, about their retirement security. Yet somehow those conferees cannot get that message. Maybe they have been in Congress too long. Maybe they are insulated from it. Somehow they just cannot get it. Well, life outside the Beltway is very precarious for a lot of employees and a lot of industries. And the question that comes to us is whether or not we are going to make an effort to have a pension bill that recognizes the fairness and the equity. Again, this is not some partisan bill. This is not some bill thought up in the last few moments. The fact of the matter is these provisions are contained, for the most part, in the Senate bill. We do not ask to go beyond that. In the Senate bill that passed the Senate 97-2. And, in fact, if we do that, there will be some economic justice for these retirees and these workers. There will be some economic fairness for these retirees and these workers. And there will be, most importantly, some sense of retirement security for millions of Americans that every day they pick up the paper and they see that yet another group of employees, another company is making a decision about reducing, getting rid of, terminating, freezing the pension plans and the health care benefits of those individuals. We owe them this legislation to deal with them in a fair fashion, in an equitable fashion, legislation that can increase the retirement security of these families. I ask for an ``aye'' vote on the motion to instruct.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, under rule XXII, clause 7(c), I hereby announce my intention to offer a motion to instruct on H.R. 2830, the pension conference report. The form of the motion is as follows: I move that the managers on the part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2830 be instructed-- (1) to agree to the provisions contained in subsections (a) through (d) of section 601 of the Senate amendment (relating to prospective application of age discrimination, conversion, and present value assumption rules with respect to cash balance and other hybrid defined benefit plans) and not to agree with the provisions contained in title VII of the bill as passed the House (relating to benefit accrual standards); (2) to agree to the provisions contained in section 413 of the Senate amendment (relating to computation of guaranteed benefits of airline pilots required to separate from service prior to attaining age 65), but only with respect to plan terminations occurring after September 11, 2001; (3) to agree to the provisions contained in section 403 of the Senate amendment (relating to special funding rules for plans maintained by commercial airlines that are amended to cease future benefit accruals); (4) to agree to the provisions contained in section 402 of the Senate amendment (relating to authority to enter alternative funding agreements to prevent plan terminations); and (5) to recede to the provisions contained in the Senate amendment regarding restrictions on funding of nonqualified deferred compensation plans, except that-- (A) to the maximum extent possible within the scope of the conference, the managers on the part of the House shall insist that the restrictions under the bill as reported from conference regarding executive compensation, including under nonqualified plans, be the same as restrictions under the bill regarding benefits for workers and retirees under qualified pension plans, (B) the managers on the part of the House shall insist that the definition of ``covered employee'' for purposes of such provisions contained in the Senate amendment include the chief executive officer of the plan sponsor, any other employee of the plan sponsor who is a ``covered employee'' within the meaning of such term specified in the provisions contained in the Senate amendment (applied by disregarding the chief executive officer), and any other individual who is, with respect to the plan sponsor, an officer or employee within the meaning of section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and (C) in lieu of the effective date specified in such provisions contained in the Senate amendment, the managers on the part of the House shall insist on the effective date specified in the provisions of the bill as passed the House relating to treatment of nonqualified deferred compensation plans when the employer's defined benefit plan is in at-risk status.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, as we just heard in the colloquy between the majority leader and the minority whip, there is expectation that a conference committee may conclude on the pension reform bill, and that is why I rise today because that bill may, in fact, be coming to the floor of the House of Representatives and to the Senate within the next week. I rise to urge my colleagues to vote again to send a message to the conferees that they should not conclude this report until they provide for the protection of older workers who are facing the conversions to cash balance plans. That means older workers who the companies are now putting on notice that they will change their benefits, they will no longer realize what they had long anticipated, the benefits of a defined benefit plan, that they will now get a substitute plan for their current pension plan, what is called a cash balance plan. Despite overwhelming votes in support of protecting older workers' pensions in the House and in the Senate, the Republican leadership plans to thumb its nose at older workers and exclude the vital transition protection. That means that many workers will lose hundreds of dollars a month in expected retirement benefits. Many of these workers will be in excess of 50 years of age, and it is highly unlikely they will be able to recover the loss of their retirement benefits, retirement benefits they have been counting on for many years, retirement benefits they have been counting on in exchange for their labor, that they signed a contract in exchange for their labor with their employers; and today, the Congress is getting ready to tell them we are sorry, we are not going to make the employers live up to their agreements, and we are not even going to provide a transition to you to soften the economic blow. If this is permitted to happen, it is shameful and it is an abuse of power by the Republican leadership, arrogantly defying the clear wishes of Members of both the House and the Senate on behalf of very special interests that do not happen to be the workers of this country. The conference language draft by the Republican conferees is a pension Trojan horse and allows companies to legally renege on their promises to workers who played by the rules, who were told that they could accrue benefits to retire, especially those who spent decades at the company. Here is what AARP CEO William Novelli says about this backroom Republican deal for older workers. ``AARP is deeply troubled that members of the pension conference committee may be considering adopting language from the House bill that would severely undercut pension protections against age discrimination currently provided older workers under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. We cannot support legislation that would undermine the age discrimination laws and permit the reduction of pension benefits for older workers, thus discouraging older workers from continuing to participate in the workforce. Our members, and older workers in general, care a great deal about these issues, and we will be informing them of the outcome of this action.'' The Senate passed its pension bill with these protections 97-2. And the House voted on these measures overwhelmingly in a motion to instruct earlier. It also not only cuts cash balance, but it cuts the protections to the pilots. Pilots who are required under Federal law to retire at age 60 now take a double hit with their pensions going into the PBGC. Because they retired early, not that they wanted to retire, they are required under Federal law to retire early, but because they retired early, they take an additional hit on their pension, and this affects many, many airline pilots and is an unfair treatment to these individuals. Again, the House and the Senate have voted twice to protect older workers in cash balance conversions. The House voted twice to protect airline pilots from unfair pension cuts at the PBGC. This motion to instruct is about fundamental fairness to older workers, specifically for those older workers suddenly faced with cash balance conversions and for those airline pilots faced with federally mandated early retirement. During the 1990s, hundreds of large employers switched to these cash balance plans, including IBM, CSX, Verizon, and the Federal Government. When we changed our pension plan back in the 1990s, we did this. Motorola, Dow Chemical, Federal Express, Wells Fargo Bank and Honeywell, they all made the decision to provide a transition and a protection for older workers, realizing that those older workers had an expectation of retirement benefit. That was not going to happen, but they would provide them some protection so they didn't take the full brunt of those changes. It is the decent thing to do. It is what Secretary Snow did when he was at CSX. It is what he voted to do at Verizon. This is the decent thing to do for workers. The benefits to the companies are immense, even if they protect these older workers in this situation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I yield 9 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. No. Well, read the words back. Maybe we can clarify it.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I object, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.