mr. speaker , i mostly want to talk about substance .  but you know it is so hypocritical for anybody on the majority side to come here and say that the minority is just saying no when you will not allow us to put on the floor a substitute to which we want to say a resounding yes .  that is really hypocrisy .  this is too important a subject to be governed by the tyranny of the majority .  we need to strengthen and to save defined benefit plans in this country .  this is the question .  will this bill do that ?  and i think the answer is basically , in all likelihood , it will not strengthen and preserve , but it will weaken and over time eliminate .  look , when it came to social security your mantra was save , strengthen social security .  and the president , in this chamber , used those terms , when the real purpose was not to save and strengthen social security .  the purpose was to replace it .  and there is a legitimate issue here , whether what you are proposing here , when combined with the senate 's and with the administration 's position , will it preserve and strengthen defined benefit plans or will it likely undermine ?  and the answer , i think , is that it will do the latter .  when we come to the general debate , i am going to be talking about a number of the factors .  there are four key factors at play in this bill .  they are technical , but they are vital : the yield curve , the credit balance issue , the credit rating or how assets are evaluated , and the averaging and smoothing issues .  as to just one of them , the yield curve provision in this bill , the people who work with these issues , the chief financial investment people , 60 percent , say essentially that most of the pension plans are going to either be frozen or they are going to be eliminated .  that is what 60 percent of these officers say will be the result .  so you are not going to be protecting workers from underfunded pension plans .  what you are going to be doing , essentially , is putting in place rules that will make it difficult for pension plans to exist and , therefore , they will be withdrawn , if not , frozen .  so that is really the basic issue here .  and it is heightened because of the administration 's position .  they want to so tighten the rules that it will be hard for any of these defined benefit plans to survive .  so this is the basic issue , whether in this country we want to try to preserve defined benefit plans .  most of them are not in trouble .  many of them would be placed in trouble through a combination of the provisions in this bill and in the senate bill .  so i want to close with this : what you are saying , and you have said it on the floor , is leave it to the conference committee .  for example , there is no protection for airline workers here at all .  leave it to the conference committee .  what you have said to a few of the people is we will make some adjustments here in this bill , but there is no assurance that those adjustments will prevail .  so in a word , what you are trying to do is not protect defined benefit plans , but through these provisions and those in the senate bill , with the help of the administration , you are going to accelerate their demise .  that is our position .  and it is worthy of discussion .  it is worthy of debate , and it is worthy of your giving us a substitute that would make sure that defined benefit plans can survive in the united states of america for the workers of this country .  