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Workforce Committee Sends Four to

House-Senate Pension Reform Conference

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Four members of the U.S. House Committee on Education & the Workforce were named today to a House-Senate conference tasked with completing work on a historic overhaul of outdated private pension laws.  Education & the Workforce Committee chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) will join Employer-Employee Relations Subcommittee chair Sam Johnson (R-TX), Employer-Employee Relations Subcommittee vice-chair John Kline (R-MN), and Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH) on the House-Senate conference.  Former Education & the Workforce Committee chairman and current House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) also will serve as a conferee on the pension reform panel. 

“The huge bipartisan majority that backed the House pension bill late last year provides this conference tremendous momentum to finish the job that we started on these critical retirement security reforms,” noted McKeon.  “The finish line is within sight, but some of our most important work remains.  Our challenge is to send President Bush a final measure that includes tough new funding rules and long-overdue reforms that recognize the new realities facing our economy and – indeed – our traditional pension system.”

With the support of 70 Democrats – including several on the Education & the Workforce Committee – the House passed the Pension Protection Act (H.R. 2830) last December by a vote of 294-132.  The Senate passed its own reform bill earlier last year.  Members of the conference will merge the two bills into a single measure that must be approved by both the House and Senate before being sent to President Bush for his signature.

“I look forward to getting to work,” said Johnson, who joined Boehner, Kline, and Ways & Means Committee chair Bill Thomas (R-CA) in authoring H.R. 2830.  “While there are many important reforms, I think that better disclosure of what is going on in pension plans is really the most important.  Better disclosure will help current employees understand what they are being promised and whether their company is able to make good on those promises.  I’m hopeful we’ll act quickly and decisively to send a strong bill to President Bush.”

H.R. 2830 includes updated funding requirements to ensure employers adequately and consistently fund their pension plans, provide workers with meaningful disclosure about the financial status of their benefits, and protect taxpayers from a possible multi-billion dollar bailout of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) should the agency’s financial condition continue to deteriorate. 

“For the first time in a generation, we’re poised to update flawed pension funding rules that have placed at risk the retirement security of far too many Americans,” Kline asserted.  “These reforms have been a long time coming, but I am confident the product we will send to President Bush will be worth the wait.”

“I look forward to working over the course of the next several weeks to forge a House-Senate agreement that protects the interests of workers, retirees, and taxpayers without jeopardizing employers' ability to offer these voluntary benefits,” concluded Tiberi.  “Enacting comprehensive pension reform will be one of our most important retirement security accomplishments in decades.”

For additional information on the Pension Protection Act, including a summary of the bill, visit the Education & the Workforce Committee website at http://edworkforce.house.gov/issues/109th/workforce/pension/pension.htm.

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