Secure Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, as more Americans enjoy longer lives than ever before, it is more crucial than ever that retirement plans and the policies that govern them keep pace with healthcare innovation and demographic change. That is the reason why a bipartisan coalition in both houses of Congress has proposed the SECURE Act, to modernize retirement savings policies.

For the first time, it would give businesses the option to band together to create pooled retirement plans for their employees, helping them save time and money and expanding access to millions of workers to an indispensable job benefit. This would especially help small businesses who would love to offer their employees retirement plans but simply cannot afford it on their own. It would allow graduate and postdoctoral students to save for their retirements by contributing income from their stipends and fellowships to Individual Retirement Accounts. And it would allow parents to withdraw retirement funds, without penalty, for the birth or adoption of a child, providing special help to younger families when they need it most.

I support all of the above provisions, and to see them enacted, I am willing to accept multiple provisions in this bill that I oppose. Unfortunately, one provision goes over the line, would hurt the very workers it purports to help, and would set a dangerous precedent for Federal policy. This measure would allow a handful of select businesses to cut their required contributions to their workers' pension plans, while still promising those workers full benefits.

Under current law, if a pension plan fails to meet its funding target, the plan sponsor must eliminate the funding shortfall through additional plan contributions, plus interest, over 7 years. The bailout in the SECURE Act, however, would extend that period to 30 years for only a handful of struggling newspapers. Additionally, it would entitle them to legally assume a higher return on investment than other businesses must use.

This would reduce the amount that certain community newspapers are required to contribute to their employees' plans each month and, given the longer payback window, would also make it less likely that these bailed out companies would ever make up the shortfall. In other words, this bill grants a special bailout to a handful of community newspapers by allowing them to shortchange their workers' pensions.

This is bad policy and bad precedent. This short-sighted strategy might prolong the life of these community newspapers for a while; that is what short-sighted strategies do. But it would only do so at the expense of their employees because, when these newspaper pensions inevitably become insolvent, which is the trajectory they are already on, they will most likely end up in the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. The PBGC is a federally-chartered business that provides pension insurance through premiums paid by private companies. In other words, all the companies required to pay into the PBGC, but that do not receive a special bailout, will be forced to pay the price. This is the opposite of ``secure.'' We ought not provide special treatment to a select group of community newspapers in the first place. And we certainly shouldn't set the precedent that those bailouts entitle recipients to raid their workers' pensions and then force more prudently run businesses to pick up the tab.

A few weeks ago, Senator Toomey offered a reasonable path forward for the SECURE Act. He suggested allowing the Senate to consider the SECURE Act with five Republican amendments and five Democratic amendments of their choosing. Unfortunately, Senator Murray refused to accept that proposal, claiming that the amendments are ``not in the interest of hardworking Americans.''

I respectfully disagree. In addition to my amendment, which would stop corporate bailouts and protect workers from corporate raids on their pension funds, Senator Cruz and Senator Braun have amendments to expand 529 savings accounts. Under their proposals, parents and grandparents could save money for the educational expenses of children with disabilities, for homeschooling, and for apprenticeships and training programs.

All of these amendments are ``in the interests of American workers.'' The Senate should consider each of them. I hope my Democratic colleagues will recognize the need to put this bill on the Senate floor so we can vote on the underlying text, as well as the reasonable amendments that have been proposed.

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