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For Immediate Release |
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October 8, 2003 |
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Statement on Pension Funding Equity Act |
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Congressman Cole's Statement on U.S. House Floor: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to support H.R. 3108, the Pension Funding Equity Act. This bipartisan, shorted-term fix is important so we can develop a long-term solution to the challenges faced by both
employers and employees who participate in defined pension plans.
This interim solution is necessitated by an unusual combination of events: Record-low interest rates, although they are beginning to tick up; a stock market decline, although, frankly, that has now reversed itself and become a stock market rally; growth in the number of retirees; and discontinuation of the 30-year Treasury benchmark that previously provided the means used for determining funding liability.
Unless we make this temporary adjustment in H.R. 3108, employers will face demands on their capital that will lessen their ability to create jobs and invest in our future. Workers will have less certainty in terms of their own pensions, and that, in turn, may well affect consumer spending and affect this economic recovery.
H.R. 3108 provides the time necessary for the recovery generated by the Bush tax cuts, which is clearly underway, the continued generation of new jobs, and new increases in stock market values, which over time will ease some of the pension challenges that we face, and, frankly, ultimately provide a better environment in which to find a long-term bipartisan solution to this problem.
I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 3108. It is simply the right thing to do.
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