HOUSE VOTES TO STOP TREASURY FROM ISSUING PENSION REGULATIONS.By a vote of 258 to 160, the House Sept. 9 approved an amendment to an appropriations bill aimed at preventing the Treasury Department from issuing proposed cash-balance pension regulations. The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Bernie Sanders Bernard "Bernie" Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is the current junior United States Senator from Vermont. Sanders was elected on November 7, 2006, and is presently a member of the 110th United States Congress. (I-VT), would forbid Treasury from spending any funds on issuing regulations contrary to a federal district court ruling in late July finding International Business Machines had discriminated against older workers when it converted conventional pension plans to cash-balance plans in 1999. By inference, the judge found most cash-balance plans discriminate against older workers because of the different formula used to determine their value as opposed to traditional defined-benefit pension plans defined-benefit pension plan A pension plan in which retirement benefits rather than contributions into the plan are specified. Thus, a retired employee who has reached a certain age with a given number of years of service and has earned a certain income is . Despite the ruling, Treasury had not withdrawn the proposed regulations. Following the House vote, Treasury did not indicate it would withdraw the proposed regulations, which IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) has been pressuring Treasury to issue. "This vote sends a strong message to the Bush administration and the Treasury Department that the time has come to finally protect workers who have seen their pensions slashed through cash balance conversions by immediately withdrawing their proposed cash balance regulations," Sanders said. Last January, 217 representatives sent a letter to President Bush urging the withdrawal of the proposed regulations. On August 22, Sanders and 14 other representatives renewed their earlier request, saying the decision of the federal court ruling in the Southern District of Illinois "raises serious questions about the legality le·gal·i·ty n. pl. le·gal·i·ties 1. The state or quality of being legal; lawfulness. 2. Adherence to or observance of the law. 3. A requirement enjoined by law. Often used in the plural. of those proposed regulations." They wrote, "The regulations would result in millions of older employees losing a significant portion of the annual pension they had been promised by their employer and had come to rely upon as part of their retirement planning Retirement financial planning refers to a collection of systems, methods, and processes which, in their aggregate, support a family unit's (client's) desire to achieve a state of financial independence, such that the need to be gainfully employed is optional. ." In addition to Sanders, the letter was signed by 10 Democrats and four Republicans, including Reps. Gil Gutknecht Gilbert William "Gil or Gilly" Gutknecht, Jr. is an American politician. Gutknecht was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives first elected in 1994 to represent Minnesota's 1st congressional district, one of eight congressional districts in Minnesota. (MN) and Sherwood Boehlert Sherwood Boehlert (born September 28, 1936) is a retired American politician from New York. He represented New York's upstate 24th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives from 1983 until 2006. (NY). |
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