Rob Portman

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate Hyde Park Community United Methodist Church on the 75th anniversary of its consecration. The origins of the Church can be traced to 1879 when the Mount Lookout Methodist Episcopal Church was organized by fifteen Methodists who were meeting in area homes. In 1880, a wooden church was erected at the site of the current church on the corner of Observatory Road and Grace Avenue on land donated by John Kilgour. Meanwhile, in 1907, another small group of congregants left the Mount Lookout M.E. and formed the Hyde Park Methodist Episcopal Church. They constructed a building at 2753 Erie Avenue, which was completed in 1915. Both churches continued to grow. After the Mount Lookout M.E. Church was damaged by termites and a tornado and the Hyde Park M.E. Church building experienced structural difficulties, Bishop Henderson urged the two churches to merge, and in 1922 the two became the Mt. Lookout Hyde Park United Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1923, the pastor of the newly merged churches, Reverend Warren Dunham, articulated the vision of the community church, and encouraged the construction of a new building. The congregation moved quickly to construct a large and impressive Gothic structure that required substantial financial sacrifice by its members. The present building was dedicated on the site of the original Mount Lookout M.E. Church on September 25, 1927. Since 1927, the Church has grown significantly, enlarging its buildings and adding to its membership. But its Invitation, dedicated on its founding, in 1927, remains unaltered, and as timeless today as then. It reads: To all who mourn and need comfort To all who are tired and need rest To all who are friendless and want friendship To all who are lonely and want companionship To all who are homeless and want sheltering love To all who pray, and all who do not, but ought To all who sin and need a savior; and to who-so-ever-will, this church opens wide its doors, and in the name of Jesus, our Lord, bids welcome! The inclusive spirit of this Invitation is one reason Hyde Park Community United Methodist Church has been blessed by such growth and success over the years. The Church community is a shining example of the United Methodist Church's current nationwide inclusiveness campaign of ``Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors.'' Over the years, the Church has had a proud tradition of not just serving the spiritual needs of the congregation, but also reaching out to help others. Consistent with the vision laid out in the 1920s, the Church has been active in the community. This includes the Hyde Park community, the Greater Cincinnati area and our greater national and world community through its ministries on Christian education, United Methodist Women, Spiritual Direction, affiliations with churches in other countries, and mission programs. All of us in Greater Cincinnati congratulate the Church, its pastors, parishioners, and staff on the occasion of the Church's 75th anniversary. We also look forward to many more years of the Hyde Park Community United Methodist Church and its open Invitation and commitment to our community.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I guess it has been a helpful discussion. What we are doing here today is we are trying to shed light on the fact that the House-passed legislation, which made these good retirement changes permanent, which the other body chose not to do that; it had to be done on a temporary basis, only for the next 8 years. We think it is very important for the purposes of planning, and what is more important than retirement planning? It is very important to the person who is planning to have some permanency. It is important to the individual worker. People need to plan for their retirement. It is planning for more than 8 years out. We need to know it is going to be there for the baby boom generation; we need to know that it is going to be permanent changes in law. For the employer, particularly the small employer, who is thinking about getting into the pension business for the first time; only 20 percent of those with 25 or fewer employees now offer pensions. For those people, they need to be able to plan. So not to have this be permanent is bad policy. It makes no sense at all. That is what we are doing today. We are trying to shine some light on this issue so that our friends in the other body will move. Now, let me just talk a little bit about what this is all about. It is really three general areas: First, allowing everyone to contribute more to their 401(k)s and their IRAs. This could not come at a more important time. The fact that you can contribute another $1,000 into your IRA account this year is very important to people, and they are taking advantage of it. In the first 6 months of this year alone, there has been a 25 percent increase in IRA contributions, and it is needed, and never needed more than now. With regard to 401(k)s, this year you can put another $500 in, plus a catch-up, as the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Weller) talked about, another $500. Over time, another $5,000 and $10,000, up to $15,000. This is extremely important, again. I would like to accelerate that. I would hope that this House will take that up at some point so that we can immediately allow people to put more aside for their retirement. But at a minimum, let us make what we did permanent. The catch-up provisions are extremely important to the baby boomers. The gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) talked about the baby boom generation not being prepared for retirement. It is true. Seventy-five million people have no retirement plan at all, other than what they might have saved in their own personal savings. They have no access to a 401(k), a simple plan, any kind of plan from their employer. We need to help these people. We therefore said if you are over 50, you get to put in even more into your retirement plan, which is particularly helpful for women who have taken time out from the workforce to raise a family, and now want to come back in and need to be able to put together that nest egg quickly. The second general area is portability, enabling people to go from job to job in a seamless way to move their retirement savings. Finally, we permit for simplification of the plan, to help small businesses to be able to offer these plans. The gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) actually talked about it earlier, and I was going to get into it. I would ask the gentleman's indulgence, instead of me getting further into that issue, if I could yield some time to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Sullivan), who is now here, to speak on the general issue. I instead will cut my remarks short, except to say this, and that is that this is all about helping people save more for retirement. This House has passed this on a bipartisan basis, over 400 votes. What we are saying here today is it is time to move to make that permanent so people can plan. It is common sense policy. The Senate has not acted, the House has, the President is ready to sign the bill. Let us move forward. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Sullivan) as a final speaker.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I do not know about keeping it light, but we will try to keep it short.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that perhaps the reason there are not a lot of people who want to speak in opposition is because this has been a very popular piece of legislation. It passed the House by over 400 votes. Even in the context of the tax cut, which was quite a partisan exercise, it passed with 308 votes. It is good legislation. I would love the opportunity to address some of the concerns that the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) raised, and I would like to do so in a moment. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Weller), a valued member of the Committee on Ways and Means, who was instrumental in putting together this legislation, particularly with regard to the very important provisions to help multi-employer plans. There was tremendous complexity surrounding these multi-employer plans. Section 415 needed to be reformed, something that had been talked about for years. Finally, with this legislation we got it done. I hope my colleague will address that.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Texas (Mr. Sessions) for yielding me time; and I am pleased to talk about today the substance of some of the legislation before us. The rule permits us to take up three bills. My understanding is today we will address two of them. They have just been mischaracterized in my view by my colleague from the other side of the aisle, and I just want to relate what they actually contain. The first is H.R. 3762. This is the pension security bill. It passed the House with a vote of 255 to 163 with 46 Democrats supporting it. It does have a controversial amendment with regard to independent investment advice, but to say that it does nothing, which my colleague and friend from California (Mr. Matsui) said earlier, is not accurate. Let me tell you just what it does. It says to people who are currently in company plans who have 401(k)s, who get a match of stock from their employer, that they do not have to be in that stock for an unlimited period of time. Under current law if an employer wants to they can give a match under a 401(k) program and say, you can have that stock but you have got to keep it, and you can never get rid of it, because there is no current rule which says that employees, the workers, have the right to unload that stock. That is a bad situation. What happened at Enron is they told people they had to be 50 years of age plus they have to have 10 years of service. So people literally got hold of that Enron stock and they did not have the ability to get it out of their retirement plan. That is current law. Enron could have said 65 instead of 50. They could have said 20 years of service. They chose 50 and 10. So what this House did on a bipartisan basis is we said, Let us change these rules. Let us say that as soon as you are vested, and vesting is after 3 years of service, that is the current vesting rule. We moved it from 5 years down to 3 years in the Portman-Cardin legislation a couple years ago. As soon as someone is vested after 3 years, you can get rid of that stock. You can divest yourself of that corporate stock that that company has given you as a match. That is a huge difference. And to say that does nothing I think not only mischaracterizes the bill, but I think that is really unfair to the workers of America who want to have that flexibility. They want to have the choice. If they want to keep that stock, fine, they should be able to. But they should also have the choice to get out of it. And a lot of folks at Enron would have gotten out of it. So that is a big change from current law. It is not something, frankly, the business community was wild about because they like the idea of giving corporate stock and tying people to that stock because they think that gives people more of a stake in that company. It enables them to have that stock be held. But we looked at it. We said it was fair. We decided to do it. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) and I worked on that. The gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy) and I worked on that and others. So to say it does nothing is just inaccurate. Second, it provides better information to workers. That is something we agreed to on a bipartisan basis. It was not a controversial part of the bill. It does provide a lot more information and better information. For instance, now when somebody gets into a plan they have to be provided with advice that says diversify. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. A commonly accepted principle for retirement is you should not have all your eggs in one basket. People now have to be told that when they get into a plan. They also have to be told, not only when they get into it but on a quarterly basis, what that plan is doing. That was not a requirement before this legislation. If we could get this out of the Senate, people would actually get quarterly statements telling them what is in their plan, what they have, how the plan is doing in plain English so they can actually have the kind of transparency that the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) talked about, and I could not agree with him more. Transparency is absolutely critical. Finally, education. Choice and information are important, but we also need to give people more tools to be able to educate themselves about how to invest their retirement savings. I think there is a consensus on doing that. There is some controversy about one element here, but it is extremely important. There are two provisions in the bill. One says that one should be able on a pretax basis to go out and get advice wherever one wants, up to 500 bucks. Just like one can get a pretax cafeteria plan for eyeglass coverage or some other benefit, one can get investment advice. Investment advice is not cheap. So it is important that people have the ability to go out to get that advice. That is something that the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) and I have put together in previous legislation; it is something this House passed. Finally, it says that companies ought to be able to allow people to come into the company and provide advice to the employees. The employer has the option to do that under this bill. It is voluntary. If the person comes forward to offer advice, the person has to disclose whatever that person is doing including being involved in a company plan, if they are. It is subject to all fiduciary responsibilities that come with that. It has to be a certified individual. So their protection is in there, but the point is there are millions of American workers today, over 42 million of them are in 401(k)s and a lot of them are getting no advice at all. In fact, 65 percent of those workers tell us they want to get education. So this is what this bill does. It is pretty simple. It says people ought to have choice. They do not have it now. And until the Senate acts, they will not have it. They ought to have better information about their plan. They ought to have better education. A couple of other really good provisions of the bill have already been passed in the corporate accountability bill. That dealt with the blackout period. Do my colleagues remember that issue with the Enron situation because they were changing plan administrators, there was a blackout where people could not sell their stock and yet the people at the top could and there was no notice of the blackout? This House passed legislation that is part of this bill that says 30-day notice, they have to tell people about a blackout and during the blackout, the corporate executives who are not even in the plan but have stock separately cannot sell their stock. What is good for the sailor is also good for the ship captain. That was that idea and that did pass as part of the corporate accountability bill, but it came out of this House and out of this legislation. So what we are doing today may seem meaningless to some, but I think it is very important because it is important to the workers of America. It is to say to the United States Senate, look, we passed this thing back in April. We responded on a bipartisan basis in the House. It is time now for the United States Senate to help America's workers. Enough talk. We have got a bipartisan consensus on which way to go. We ought to get it done. The second piece of legislation has to do with enabling people to put more in their retirement accounts, enable them to move their accounts from job to job, portability, and simplifying the rules for small business so that they can offer more accounts. We know for a fact that of the 75 million people in America who do not have any retirement savings plan at all, 75 million people are left out right now. Most of them work in small business. In fact, among small businesses, only 20 percent offer any kind of plan like a 401(k) or a similar plan. So this House, on a 308 to 70 vote and in the past on a 400 vote, passed this legislation. And what we are saying here is we ought to now make that legislation permanent. It lets everybody save more for their retirement. It is good policy. It is already working. IRA contributions are up 25 percent this past year, and thank goodness, because some of that money is accounted for now and able to balance some of what is happening in the markets so that people have a little more retirement savings. So it is out there working. It is good policy. Why do we think it ought to be made permanent? Because although it does not expire for 8 years, it is very difficult to plan. Most Americans are trying to plan for their retirement. They want to know that this thing is not going to expire in 8 years, which it does under the current legislation. Small businesses would like to plan. If someone is thinking about getting into a pension plan for the first time if they are one of those 80 percent of small businesses, Mom and Pop operations, and they are sort of scared about the cost and the burden of liabilities to this, we reduce some of these for them here but they are saying, gee, how do we know that if we get into this business we are not going to get knocked out of it in 8 years? We ought to make it permanent. I hope this is something this House would agree on. We already had a vote on that in this House. All we are saying to the Senate is, please, instead of talking about this so much, let us do something. We have the ability to do something. We have a consensus on how to help every worker have a more secure retirement. There may be other things that people would like to add. The gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) has talked about executive compensation. Those are important issues. We ought to address those issues. It will not help one person get a pension, I can tell you that. So let us focus on what we are about here, which is helping workers to be able to have a little nest egg for their retirement, have a little peace of mind so that when they retire, they have something to be able to use for their own retirement and pass along to their kids and grandkids. That is what we are doing today. It is very simple. I appreciate the time. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in strong support of the resolution before us. This is a resolution to send a strong message that it is time to help all American workers to save more for retirement and to be able to have more security in their retirement. I commend the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Pickering) for offering the resolution, and I am happy to support him. Mr. Speaker, today we are talking about doing the right thing. We are talking about just following up on what this House did back in April to be able to give people a little more security in their retirement. The underlying legislation that we are encouraging the other body to act on allows people who have retirement plans to have a lot more security in a number of different ways. First, very importantly, if they are in a 401(k) plan now and they get a corporate match, as was the case with Enron, that company can tie a person into that stock for a long period of time. At Enron it was age 50 plus having 10 years of service. Under the 401(k) rules as they currently exist, a person could be tied down until they were age 65 or indefinitely. We say instead people, after they have vested and they vest after only 3 years thanks to this House taking action last year to decrease vesting from 5-years to 3 years, after only 3 years they can divest of that stock. That is a big difference and it does make a difference. It makes a difference to millions of workers around this country who have 401(k) plans, for 42 million people in that situation. Those who have the good fortune of getting a match from their employer, and most of them do, and those who get that in corporate stock now will have the ability, the choice to be able to get out of that stock that the workers at Enron did not have. Second and very importantly, it provides a lot better information to those same workers so that they are going to have the kind of data they need to make a good decision, better information, including the fact that when they get into a pension plan and get given a statement saying this is what this plan is all about and they ought to diversify, because commonly accepted investment principles for retirement says people do not want all their eggs in one basket, they want to have diversification. Companies now would have to say that in plain English to employees as they get into these plans. That is good. That is an improvement. More important to me is that on a quarterly basis now a statement is going to be given to all workers. It includes the value of their assets, again their rights to diversify so they know they have those rights, an explanation of generally accepted investment principles in plain English. This is extremely important. It is not required now. Finally, with regard to blackout periods, there was discussion earlier about the fact that during a blackout period that executives would be able to trade where employees would not who were in a 401(k) plan, that is not true. That is changed in this legislation. This legislation also says that with regard to a blackout period a person has got to get 30 days notice. That was picked up in the Corporate Accountability Act that actually already passed, but it came out of this legislation out of the House. There is additional fiduciary responsibilities that is in this legislation that during a so-called blackout period; that is, when the company changes advisers or something and has a blackout period on its 401(k) plan or other retirement plan, that people cannot trade in the stock during that time period. There are additional fiduciary responsibilities that go to the employer, to the executives. That is in the legislation. These are all positive changes. Finally, with regard to education, everybody who looks at our retirement system today agrees that we not only need to allow people to put more aside for retirement, we need to encourage people to be able to do more for themselves and their families, but we also need to give people more information and better education. This legislation says that on a pretax basis a person gets a tax break basically for going down and getting investment advice, up to $500. It is not inexpensive to get investment advice. This is very important to people. They can choose whoever they want. There is no potential conflict of interest here because they can choose an adviser who is a third party who has nothing to do with the company or its 401(k) plan. Also, significantly, as the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) just discussed, it also provides companies the option to be able to have advisers come into the company and offer good, sound advice under a fiduciary duty, that they have to not only provide good advice and sound advice and objective advice but they have to be certified, they have to be qualified to do so, and they have to disclose any kind of potential conflict they might have with the company or its 401(k) plan. This is, when we talk to people in the trenches, again, one of the most important, single aspects of this legislation, which is to provide workers with better education so they can make better decisions so there is a nest egg there when they retire that will take care of themselves and their families in retirement. This is great legislation, and there is no better way to show that than the fact that it has passed the House on a strong bipartisan basis. Forty-six Democrats voted for it. It is now stuck in the other body, and the President waits for it to come to his desk which he says he will sign it. He will sign it immediately. Today's exercise may be viewed by some as meaningless, but to us it is simply a way of sending a strong message. Workers are waiting for this relief. The Enron debacle happened about a year ago. In April the House acted, and still we see no action on the other side of the Capitol, in the other body, and therefore, we cannot help people to be able to get all those rights we talked about earlier, these important changes in retirement security. There were a number of statements made earlier by some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that I just do not get. They talked about how this bill gives executives more perks. Name one. I challenge my colleagues. Name one. I do not know what they are referring to. They say it makes it worse because executives can divest or sell when there is an employee blackout. Not so, and actually, again, that is in current law now because it was part of this bill, but then it got passed as part of the Corporate Accountability Act. I do not know what talking points the other side of the aisle is referring to. But the bottom line is that this legislation was bipartisan. It passed this House with a strong vote. It is entirely focused on retirement security, helping people to be able to have more security in their retirement accounts. We are saying today that it is time to move this legislation from the halls of Congress and from a lot of talk to action, and to be able to actually help people in need, people who are looking at their retirement accounts decrease 20 to 30 percent, and telling those people help is on the way. This is one way to give Americans a more secure retirement. It is good legislation, and I strongly urge its passage. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith).

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to talk a little about what is actually before us today. The gentlewoman from California talked about a lot of different issues and ended by saying that she is not supportive of the legislation because it does not include certain things. Everything she talked about including has to do with executive compensation. Taxing executives and talking about ways in which we can further keep executives from getting the kind of compensation that they are currently getting is a legitimate subject and it ought to be one that we have formal debate on, have hearings on it and bring it to the floor. But I would ask the gentlewoman how it is going to help one person have a more secure pension. It has nothing to do with what is before us. It is a great message. I would ask the gentlewoman, I know that she is not on our committee that dealt with the prescription drug issue for months and I see the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) is here, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin) and others from the committee, but to say that we have not passed a prescription drug benefit I think is a little surreal. I remember being on this floor and spending a lot of time on that issue. I remember passing a $350 billion piece of legislation that provides real coverage for prescription drugs. We can differ on how that prescription drug coverage is offered to our seniors, but the House took it upon itself to pass legislation that provides a real prescription drug benefit. It, too, now that the gentlewoman has raised it, if she wants to get into the other issues, we can talk about all the ways the House has acted and the Senate has not acted and the President awaits. Prescription drugs is a perfect example. The Senate has not acted on providing a prescription drug benefit. If you would consider the generic drug legislation in the Senate a prescription drug benefit, I hope you are not going home and telling your constituents that because it is not going to offer them the kind of benefit that they are looking for which is to be able to pay for prescription drugs. The average senior pays over $2,100 a year. None of that will be helped by the generic bill that passed in the Senate. The Senate was not able to pass a prescription drug benefit. They had it on the floor for a week. Homeland security is another issue that we worked on together. We passed that issue 9 weeks ago now or something like that. The President asked us to pass it, the House got busy, we had a good select committee process, and we passed it. The Senate still can't seem to get its act together to pass legislation in that regard to be able to keep our country safer. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. PORTMAN. I apologize to the Chair. I will refrain from saying that again. My point is if you go down the list, whether it is prescription drug coverage, whether it is the pension security bill before us today, whether it is the faith-based initiative which passed this House on a bipartisan basis, whether it is having a budget, the Senate does not even have a budget, the Senate has not been able to, I am not sure how I can characterize this, but the Senate has not been able to act and the House has. I just think it is a little surreal to stand here and say that somehow in this prescription drug issue, the House has not acted and the Senate has is not accurate and to say that somehow this pension bill is not good because it does not deal with executive compensation issues which have nothing to do with what we were trying to do at the time, which was to give people a little more security and more rights with regard to their pensions.

Mr. PORTMAN. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. PORTMAN. Reclaiming my time, I think I allowed the gentlewoman to make her point, which was my point, which is that the House did act to pass on a bipartisan basis, admittedly we did not agree on all the details, but we passed a real prescription drug benefit under Medicare. The Senate has not. I do not think there is any issue more important to my constituents. I agree with the gentlewoman. I think it is very important to move forward on that. But the Senate has not acted. That is what we are trying to do today. We are just trying to shine light on the fact that on a number of different issues, the United States Senate has not followed suit, has not passed in a constructive way legislation that we could then take into conference and then send to the President for signature which then could have a real effect on the lives of real people. There is no issue more important than prescription drug coverage, but there is also a very important issue out there which is how to keep people who want to be able to save for their retirement, to give them a little more security so that they are going to know, in the example of Enron for instance, where they could not get rid of their corporate stock, they had to hold onto it because they were restricted, that that could no longer happen. That cannot happen if this legislation passes. People can no longer be told, You have to keep that stock until you're age 50 plus 10 years of service. They can no longer be told that during a blackout period executives are able to trade shares and they cannot. They can no longer be told they are not going to give notice of blackout periods when they cannot trade stocks. They can no longer be in a situation where they are not getting the kind of information that they need through quarterly statements, which we are going to require under this legislation, what their account is, what is going on with their plan. The kind of transparency that the gentleman from California (Mr. Matsui) talked about is absolutely essential. That is the stuff of this legislation. It also does provide education. I talked earlier about the gentleman from Maryland's bill and mine which lets people on a pretax basis get a tax break for going out and getting education advice wherever they want it. That is something I think this House on a bipartisan basis agrees is necessary to move to the next step in retirement security. Those are the kinds of things that are in this legislation. Those are the kinds of things that we need to have done. The Senate needs to act. The House has acted. It is time to actually help the American people and not just talk about it. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remark and to include extraneous material on the subject of H. Res. 540, the resolution just considered.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in remembrance of James L. Charles, a dear friend, constituent, community leader, and public servant who passed away on September 1, 2002. Jim was born in Adams County, Ohio on August 21, 1922. He lived a full life, having proudly served his local community and nation. Early on, he served in the U.S. Marines in World War II. Most recently he was a member of the Ohio Education Association, the National Education Association, the Highland Chapter of Ohio Retired Teachers Association, the Brown County Shrine Club, Georgetown American Legion Post #180, Masonic Lodge #631 of Columbus, Scottish Rite Valley of Dayton, and the Syrian Temple of Cincinnati. He earned a Bachelor of Education from the University of Dayton in 1953, and a Master of Education from Xavier University in 1967. For much of his life, his passion was helping others learn to read and further their education. For a number of years, he owned and operated a restaurant in Dayton, Ohio, which established a co-op program so employees could get a college education. In addition, he served as the State Director of The National Right to Read Foundation and also as President of the Ohio Reading Reform Foundation. In the 1980's, he worked with the Ohio General Assembly on the issue of literacy, and he was the author of an Ohio State law, signed in 1989, which encourages the use of phonics to teach reading skills. Jim was a strong believer in the benefits of phonics, and through his personal efforts, he not only made a huge difference in the progress of phonics, but also in the reading skills of thousands of Ohioans. Mr. Speaker, Jim Charles made a difference in the lives of others. His service to our country and to Southwestern Ohio are to be commended and remembered well. All of us in Southwestern Ohio offer condolences to his wife, Dr. Doris Charles, and are thankful for Jim's many contributions to our community.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I think the FOIA concerns over parts of this amendment have already been made by others, but I will say just to my friend from Ohio, that is clearly not the intent of the underlying bill nor is it the impact of the underlying bill. All of the FOIA requirements that we would have, including right to know, would continue to be operative. This is a very narrow stipulation that, with regard to infrastructure information provided by the private sector, that we would get limited FOIA protection, which is absolutely necessary for national security, and that has been discussed. This amendment would also create a plaintiff lawyers' dream as I see it, and that is the civil actions open to punitive damages for whistleblowers claiming to have suffered from reprisal. The mere threat of these punitive damages can cause defendants, including the government, to settle cases; and it does, to settle cases that have questionable merit just to reduce that risk of an extreme verdict. The opportunity of punitive damages for a plaintiff, can make an otherwise meritless case look awfully tempting to pursue, just in case the jury does come in with a big verdict. It is excessive. Let us be clear. The committee bill does have traditional whistleblower protections in it. I am kind of tired of hearing it does not. Please turn to page 185 of the bill, because it is right there. These are the whistleblower protections that we have currently and they should be continued. They are important. We should be promoting team spirit at this new Department, collaboration. The bill gives the Department the chance to give merit pay, performance bonuses in order to make this department work better as a team. That is the right incentive. Let us not give incentives to start disputes in the off chance that a clever plaintiffs' lawyer might find something to win in a settlement. Let us stick with the strong whistleblower protections we have in the underlying legislation. Let us stick with the FOIA provisions which are appropriate to provide this narrow limitation with regard to infrastructure information that is important to protecting the national security of this country. Let us vote down this amendment and support the underlying bill.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, as a member of the Select Committee, I heard a lot of this discussion, and I just wanted to make a comment on some of the comments we have had on the floor. Not referring to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), but a lot of raising of voices and yelling is not going to get the job done. We all share the same goal, and that is that the flying public be safer. My own airport, the Greater Cincinnati Airport, says they cannot meet the deadline, even though they are pushing hard.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the distinguished majority whip and a member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson). (Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Watts), one of the House leaders on this issue.

Mr. PORTMAN. No, I will not.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman, more raising of voices and more yelling is not going to solve this problem. What is going to solve the problem is putting together a plan to get it done.

Mr. PORTMAN. As has been stated earlier in the debate, three-quarters of our airports can probably meet the deadline. They will push hard and they will make it. For those who cannot make it, the question is will the flying public be safer if we force this deadline or will the flying public be safer if we give them a plan where they have to meet the deadline over a specified period, which is 1 year. Incidentally, it is the same date that passed this House by an overwhelming bipartisan vote, December 31, 2002. I do not know how the gentleman voted who is now walking off the floor, but that was the vote in this House. The DOT Inspector General Ken Mead has recently told us, and this is a quote from him, and this is the Department of Transportation Inspector General, ``The challenge facing TSA in meeting the December 31 deadline of this year is unprecedented. An effort of this magnitude has never been executed in any single country or group of countries.'' That is what we have heard from the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Granger) and others. Most of the airports are going to meet it, but those who cannot, we need to be sure they have a plan to meet it so that the flying public is safer. Now, if we force machines into these airports that do not work as well as machines that would be able to be in place within this plan, within the 1-year extension, is the flying public safer? I do not think so. More important is that we get it right than do it in haste. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), who has spent a lot of time on this issue.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dooley).