mr. speaker , in a few words , what we need to do is to reform our pension system but not to undermine it . 
there is a basic issue here , and i hope members will pay attention to it . 
we have had in this country in the private sector a system of guaranteed monthly benefits under defined pension plans in the private sector for millions and millions of people . 
that has been meaningful . 
what i think is going to happen if this bill becomes law and if it were to be combined in conference with provisions in the senate is essentially to undermine defined benefit plans and move us towards what are called defined contribution plans , so more and more , everybody will rely on a 401 ( k ) instead of the guaranteed benefit in the private sector . 
that shift was tried in social security by the majority . 
it failed for good reasons , and now i think there is another effort here regarding private pension plans to lead to the same result . 
we asked the bush administration when they testified before ways and means , tell us the impact on industry of your proposals . 
they could not tell us . 
if you look at the chief financial officers , 60 percent of them who deal with pension plans essentially say that this yield curve of the administration , and there is a modified version of it in this bill , would lead to benefit cuts and termination of defined benefit plans , and that would affect manufacturing as well as other industries . 
i know there have been some efforts to moderate that . 
various people have scrambled to try to reduce the potential undermining of defined benefit plans through this provision on credit balances , but i want everybody to know that that is not likely to work out in the main because this republican bill would discourage companies from doing the responsible and sensible thing , advance funding their pension plans to free up resources in years when they needed to make big expenditures , like rolling out a big product line , and penalize those who would do it any way , who would advance funds . 
look , there are some transition rules , but they are not going to basically resolve this issue of whether we are going to maintain , strengthen defined benefit plans . 
now , it is said , look to the conference committee . 
all i can say is , look at the history of conference committees in this institution in recent years . 
what is likely to come out is a bill that would make this bill even worse , and even if it did not , what we face with this bill is this basic question : do we want to strengthen defined guaranteed pension plans and payments , or are we going to move to everybody on their own ? 
i think this house should stand up and say , let us stand up for a defined benefit system in this country . 
