September 25, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 155 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Pages S5695-S5700]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             CLOTURE MOTION

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination 
     of Eugene Scalia, of Virginia, to be Secretary of Labor.
         Lamar Alexander, Mike Braun, Pat Roberts, John Boozman, 
           John Thune, Johnny Isakson, Mike Crapo, John Hoeven, 
           Roger F. Wicker, Mike Rounds, Cory Gardner, Steve 
           Daines, Tim Scott, Shelley Moore Capito, John Barrasso, 
           Jerry Moran, Mitch McConnell.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that the debate on the 
nomination of Eugene Scalia, of Virginia, to

[[Page S5696]]

be Secretary of Labor, shall be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Florida (Mr. Rubio).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio) 
would have voted ``yea.''
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), 
the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Booker), the Senator from California 
(Ms. Harris), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator 
from Massachusetts (Ms. Warren) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 52, nays 42, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 309 Ex.]

                                YEAS--52

     Alexander
     Barrasso
     Blackburn
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Braun
     Burr
     Capito
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Cramer
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hawley
     Hoeven
     Hyde-Smith
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Lankford
     Lee
     McConnell
     McSally
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Romney
     Rounds
     Sasse
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Wicker
     Young

                                NAYS--42

     Baldwin
     Blumenthal
     Brown
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Coons
     Cortez Masto
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Gillibrand
     Hassan
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Jones
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Manchin
     Markey
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Murphy
     Murray
     Peters
     Reed
     Rosen
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--6

     Bennet
     Booker
     Harris
     Rubio
     Sanders
     Warren
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.


                  Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 549

  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Mr. President, I rise to speak about my 
amendment to H.R. 549, which grants temporary protected status, or TPS, 
for Venezuelans from Nicolas Maduro's oppressive regime and reforms the 
broken TPS program.
  I would like to thank my friends, Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman 
Mario Diaz-Balart, who have been tireless advocates for the Venezuelan 
people as we fight for freedom in Latin America and across the globe. I 
am proud to have worked with Senator Rubio, along with my colleague 
from Utah, Senator Lee, and other Republican Senators to offer 
protection for the Venezuelan people while making necessary reforms to 
TPS.
  The crisis in Venezuela is a defining human rights issue of our time. 
Maduro is starving his own people, and innocent children are dying. 
What is happening in Venezuela is pure genocide. We have to act, but we 
also need to be responsible. The courts have basically made a temporary 
program permanent, which is not sustainable.
  My amendment protects the vulnerable Venezuelan population while 
making sure that human rights violators are clearly identified as 
ineligible to come to the United States. My bill grants TPS for 
Venezuelans right now.
  The amendment also makes much-needed reforms to our TPS program. The 
amendment grants TPS to Venezuelans for 18 months. It requires 
congressional approval for TPS extensions, no more than 18 months at a 
time. My amendment limits the ability of illegal aliens with no 
connection to the TPS designation to benefit from TPS. It ensures that 
human rights violators identified under the Magnitsky Act are not 
eligible for TPS status. It includes provisions to distinguish that TPS 
status does not count as admission for purposes of the Immigration and 
Nationality Act. Under my amendment, TPS recipients cannot return to 
the TPS country during the period of designation. And finally, the 
amendment requires that current TPS designations will come up for 
congressional review 2 years after the enactment of this amendment.
  We want those seeking refuge from war and oppressive regimes to have 
a safe haven in our country, but we need a system that works and that 
is truly temporary.
  I am honored to work with my colleagues to get something done today 
to help Venezuelan families and to make some much-needed changes to our 
broken system.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the Senate in 
Spanish.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (English translation of the statement made Spanish is as follows:)
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. We need TPS now. I stand with the people of 
Venezuela, and I will continue to fight for freedom and democracy in 
Latin America. It is time for Maduro and his thugs to leave power.
  Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent 
that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration 
and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 549. I 
ask unanimous consent that the Scott of Florida amendment be agreed to 
and that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and 
passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid 
upon the table.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, every 
Member of the Senate knows that Venezuela's illegitimate dictator, 
Nicolas Maduro, has created an unprecedented and harrowing humanitarian 
crisis in that country. Extreme food and medicine shortages, widespread 
criminal violence, and brutal state-sponsored repression have forced 
more than 4.3 million Venezuelans to flee their homeland. This number 
could be 8 million by the end of next year.
  As Venezuelans flee their country, it is time for the United States 
to place itself fully on the side of the Venezuelan people.
  Unfortunately, just this week we have seen news stories about the 
Trump administration deporting Venezuelans from Florida. It is 
unconscionable that anyone would be sent back to the catastrophic 
humanitarian conditions that exist in Venezuela. That is why, in 
February of this year, Senator Durbin and I, along with Senators Rubio, 
Leahy, and Booker, introduced bipartisan legislation to provide TPS to 
Venezuelans living here in the United States. The House of 
Representatives has already passed a version of this bill back in July, 
with support from dozens of Republican Members.
  However, rather than providing TPS for vulnerable Venezuelans in the 
United States, the junior Senator from Florida has brought up an 
amendment that seeks to overhaul existing TPS statute and make it 
easier for the Trump administration to strip status from vulnerable 
migrants who are legally in the United States.
  Respectfully, the suggestions that the courts have made it impossible 
to end any TPS is just not based in fact. This debate is not about 
watering down our immigration laws. It is about using the laws that we 
have right now to provide protection to Venezuelans so that we can 
ensure that the Trump administration doesn't deport them back to the 
nightmare they fled.
  While I join the Senator in the same goal, it is unfortunate that the 
Senator from Florida would prefer to pass legislation that advances the 
administration's immigration agenda rather than help the Venezuelan 
people--something we all agree about.
  As a matter of fact, we don't even really need congressional action 
because the President has the right to give temporary protected status 
to the Venezuelans living in the United States and he doesn't need an 
act of Congress to do that. He has failed to do that. It is in that 
failure that the House of Representatives acted to try to create a 
legislative response.
  For all these reasons, I object to the unanimous consent request of 
the Senator from Florida.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Since the Senator from Florida and I do agree on the 
need to provide TPS for Venezuelans, as in legislative session, I ask 
unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee

[[Page S5697]]

be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 549, the bill that has 
already passed in the House, and the Senate proceed to its immediate 
consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time 
and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid 
upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Reserving the right to object, I object on half 
of my colleague, Senator Rand Paul.
  What I propose is a bill that grants TPS to Venezuelans right now. It 
also makes much-needed reforms to the TPS program and gives Congress 
real oversight.
  I am very disappointed that my Democratic colleagues would block this 
commonsense compromise. Republicans support it. The sponsor of the 
House-passed bill supports it. I believe the President would sign it. 
It is clear that the Democrats actually don't want to get something 
done on this issue. Unfortunately, they decided to use the Venezuelan 
community as a political prop, instead of working with us to find a 
solution. I think that is shameful. Even though the Democrats stood up 
and blocked TPS for Venezuelans today, I will never stop fighting to 
support the Venezuelan community here.
  My amendment is a solution that can be passed by Congress and signed 
into law by the President. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle will help us to get this done.
  We cannot lose sight of the fact that Nicolas Maduro is killing his 
citizens. It is genocide. Every passing day, the situation on the 
ground grows worse. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans are fleeing 
the violence and starvation of Maduro's socialist regime, and they need 
our help.
  While extending TPS to Venezuelans is the right move, the United 
States and freedom-loving nations around the world need to do 
everything in our power to isolate Maduro in Venezuela and cut off the 
supply of money from Cuba to Caracas.
  It is time to help Venezuelan families. It is time to get TPS reform 
done in this country. Temporary protected status was never meant to be 
endless. It was meant to help families in need. We need to get this 
program to work. We need to get TPS for Venezuelans today.
  I look forward to working with all my colleagues to help all the 
families in Venezuela and finally get a real long-term solution to TPS.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, very briefly, I regret that my colleague 
has gone down the road of questioning political motives here.
  The reality is, in a bipartisan way, the Senator from Florida joined 
with us in February of this year to provide legislation that would 
provide TPS for Venezuelans and the United States. The House of 
Representatives, which has a Democratic majority--and he mentions the 
Democrats--passed a version of this bill in July of this year with the 
support from dozens of Republican Members, a bipartisan effort in the 
House of Representatives.
  At the end of the day, it doesn't take undermining TPS--dramatically 
changing TPS--in order to give Venezuelans temporary protected status. 
That is something the President could do without having the House of 
Representatives or the Senate act, but he has chosen not to. There are 
those who want to try to create an excuse for the President, but he has 
chosen not to do it, No. 1.
  No. 2, the reality is, if we wanted to create TPS for Venezuelans, we 
could immediately do that right now by accepting my unanimous consent 
request because the House of Representatives passed it with broad, 
bipartisan support. We could do it right now. It would be on the way to 
the President, and then, of course, he would have to sign the 
legislation even though he could do it on his own right now.
  I hope we can work toward the goal of actually giving the Venezuelans 
that opportunity who are living in the United States and seeking refuge 
from the violence, from the chaos that is Venezuela, but I am not ready 
to undermine all of the temporary protected status in order to do that.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.


                           Retirement Policy

  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I am on the floor tonight to talk about 
retirement security, which is something everybody cares about. Who 
doesn't want peace of mind in retirement?
  When I am back home, I hear about it all of the time, partly because 
a lot of people are worried about the costs they are going to have in 
retirement, including long-term care costs. A lot of people are seeing 
their parents and their grandparents living longer, healthier lives; 
yet they do not have their retirement nest eggs in order to keep up. So 
we need to do something to help on that.
  Social Security is there as the safety net. It used to always be 
there, but that is what it is, just a base amount: $1,200 a month. It 
is not very much, but it is the average for some folks in my home State 
of Ohio. You have to have a private retirement savings that adds to 
that, and that can mean the savings you have in your bank account. The 
best way to do it is through a 401(k) account at your work where the 
employer, hopefully, puts a match in. So it is a good deal for you 
because you put money in, and your employer puts money in, and you get 
to have a tax deduction for it. Even if you are not at work, you can 
take an individual IRA. With the IRA, it is the same thing wherein you 
get a tax deduction. That is good. Some companies have the defined 
benefit plan. That is the old pension plan. That is great if you have 
one. Not as many workers do anymore, but we want to preserve those that 
are left. For those who are Federal Government employees, they do have 
the Federal employees' pension plan, which works for them.
  All of this together is incredibly important right now for the people 
I represent, and people are worried about it.
  Some of the statistics are actually pretty scary of a lot of people 
who work for small businesses who don't have access to plans 
altogether. They just don't have any opportunity to get retirement 
savings plans. As an example, about 50 percent of the workers in these 
small businesses are in that category. Over time, we have tried to 
address some of these issues. Right now, fortunately, the U.S. Senate 
has a few bills that it could take up that would actually help in that.
  I have been working on this issue for a number of years--actually, 
about 20 years--going back to my days in the House with now-Senator Ben 
Cardin. We passed legislation to expand how much you can put into a 
retirement account--a 401(k), an IRA. We increased the amount. There 
are the catchup contributions that some people are familiar with. There 
is also what is called auto enrollment, whereby companies automatically 
enroll you unless you choose not to enroll, which helps to get the 
participation rate way up, from about 75 percent up to 95 percent.
  We have done some things that have helped, and because of that, I 
know that, if you provide more incentives for retirement, it works 
because it worked back in 2001. In fact, if you look at what has 
happened since then, total retirement savings have increased from about 
$11 trillion to about $29 trillion since 2001. By the way, this means 
there are more resources available in our economy because there are 
more savings, and savings are good things for investment. There is a 
higher GDP--higher economic growth--greater access to capital for small 
businesses and so on. So this has worked.
  By the way, these retirement nest eggs have increased among every 
income quintile since 2001 when you adjust it for inflation. It is not 
just the people at the higher end or even in the middle; it is people 
who are of low income, middle low, middle income, and higher income who 
have all benefited from this. As I said, we have a lot more to do 
because, even with that Social Security, which is a safety net, it is 
really tough to live on that. People are not saving enough through 
their private savings and their retirement plans.
  We need to finish the work that we started. We also need to fix some 
outdated regulations that just don't make sense in today's world. I am 
chair of

[[Page S5698]]

what is called the subcommittee on retirement within the Committee on 
Finance. We are working on these proposals on a bipartisan basis, and 
we are making some progress. I am going to tell you about some of those 
bills now.
  One bill is before the Senate right now in the sense that it has 
already passed the House. It is called the SECURE Act. One is a larger 
bill that does more than the SECURE Act that has been introduced by 
Senator Cardin and me. Then there is a small provision I want to 
mention tonight that has been introduced separately, which is also in 
the SECURE Act. It is an urgent thing to pass because there are a bunch 
of people who are going to lose their retirement benefits unless we 
pass it very soon. Let me back up and give you some of the troubling 
facts about why we need to do something here.
  First of all, fewer than half of the employees who are, again, at 
small businesses--businesses with fewer than 50 workers--have access to 
plans. The problem is really in our smaller businesses, and we know 
that. Larger business all tend to have 401(k)s. Many have defined 
contribution plans like a 401(k), and others have defined benefit plans 
like pensions. They tend to have retirement options for workers, but 
many of the small businesses do not. Even when workers have access to 
plans, there are still only 34 percent who participate.
  Amongst small businesses, there are fewer plans than there should be, 
but there are also fewer people participating. Only 22 percent of part-
time workers are in plans. Now, increasingly in our economy, people 
have part-time jobs or may have a few part-time jobs, but they don't 
have retirement plans in any of them.
  By the way, when you look at this in terms of the folks who are not 
participating, low-income Americans are also not participating as you 
would want. Only 22 percent of low-income families are participating in 
retirement plans. Many of them don't have the disposable income to be 
able to contribute, and we will talk about that in a second as to how 
to address that problem.

  The final problem I want to mention does not have to do with the 
small businesses or part-time workers or low-income workers. It has to 
do with what we talked about at the beginning, which is people who 
outlive their retirements. Let's face it. We are living longer and 
healthier lives as Americans, and that is a good thing, but a lot of 
people didn't or couldn't plan for that. They may have thought, I have 
a nice, little nest egg here, and I have a 401(k), and I am going to 
retire at age 65. Yet, when they are in their late eighties or 
nineties, they realize there just wasn't enough set aside. Here is an 
opportunity for us to address that as well.
  Earlier this year, Senator Cardin and I introduced legislation called 
the Retirement Security and Savings Act, and it addresses all of these 
problems that I mentioned. It has more than 50 reforms, actually, to 
help Americans achieve this goal of safe, secure retirements--peace of 
mind--after their working for years and letting people retire with 
dignity. It has a few important provisions that I want to mention 
tonight. I won't go into all 50, but I will mention some of them.
  First, to increase this low 22-percent coverage among low-income 
workers, it expands what is called the saver's credit. This has worked 
well, but it is not refundable now, which means, for a lot of people 
who are of low income, they can't take advantage of it because they 
don't have the income tax liability, particularly with the new tax 
bill, frankly. For a lot of people, it has actually lowered taxes so 
that they don't have the ability to take a deduction, but they can use 
a credit. We changed the saver's credit to expand it so that it is more 
usable, and we make it refundable. We don't make it refundable to 
individuals but, rather, refundable to a retirement account because you 
don't want to just provide more funding out there that is not going to 
be used for this correct purpose of retirement. It has to go into your 
retirement account. In addition, it increases the credit amount so as 
to be available to a lot of low-income savers. This is really going to 
help get people to be able to save for retirement, again, who are 
working but who are not saving.
  The bill also addresses the problem of only 22 percent of part-time 
workers being in plans. It requires employers to allow part-time 
workers who have completed 2 years of service to participate in 401(k) 
plans. This is a big deal to the AARP, as an example, and it is one 
reason it is strongly supporting this bill. By the way, this is also 
being supported by a whole group of businesses, nonprofits, and others. 
People love this bill because it is going to help people to save for 
retirement. What is not to like there? Particularly with regard to 
part-time workers, our saying, ``if you have completed 2 years of 
service, you need to have access to a 401(k) plan,'' it is going to 
help.
  It also allows employers to make matching contributions to the 401(k) 
accounts of employees who are paying off student loans who otherwise 
wouldn't receive a full match. Why? It is that they have to choose 
between paying down the student loan debt they have and saving for 
retirement. I really like this idea. It is an innovative one. It was 
first proposed by Senator Ron Wyden, by the way, who is the ranking 
Democrat on the Committee on Finance.
  I think this will really help the people who are, again, going into 
the workforce. They have these student loans. They have to pay off that 
debt, but they can't afford to put money into 401(k)s. This enables 
them to put that money into the match, and it helps to get them started 
on retirement. On average, the student loan debt now for someone who 
comes out of one of our 4-year colleges or universities is $27,000. 
That makes it tough for a lot of people to get started in life.
  To get at this problem, we talked about a few small businesses having 
plans. Portman-Cardin increases the tax credit that small businesses 
receive for one's starting a retirement plan. It is $500 now, and we 
take it up to $5,000. That is a tenfold increase that will really help 
small businesses, we are told. This is why they support the bill.
  It also provides an innovative tax credit idea. Small businesses will 
get a tax credit if they automatically enroll their employees in the 
plans at least every 3 years. What does this mean? We talked about auto 
enrollment earlier and that, if you have auto enrollment in your 
company, your participation rate goes up to 95 percent from about 75 
percent. Why? It is that people come into the workforce and might not 
sign up for a 401(k), but if they are automatically signed up, they are 
not going to say no, right? This way, they will start to get a little 
of the payroll taxes and a little of their paychecks going toward 
retirement. They will find out that this works. They will start their 
nest eggs, and they will like them, so they will stick with them.
  It is the same thing here. If at least every 3 years you have to 
automatically enroll your employees, what will happen? You will get 
people into these plans, and they will stay in these plans. This is 
going to be a big deal in small businesses, and we think it is worth 
giving them a tax credit for it. It is kind of an innovative idea.
  For small businesses, our bill also reduces some of the burdensome 
and duplicative regulations that are associated with administering the 
plan because, for a lot of small businesses, they don't have lawyers or 
general counsel; they don't have professionals who can help on this. 
Yet the HR people would sure like to have the ease of the 
administration of these plans. So we do that, which is important in 
order to get more of these small businesses to offer these plans.
  We also address the problem we have talked about with Americans 
living longer and healthier lives and being in danger of outliving 
their retirements. For those who are following this closely because 
they are getting close to retirement, they should pay attention here 
because this could be helpful. To help the folks who have accumulated 
retirement savings preserve those nest eggs--to help to preserve your 
hard-earned nest eggs--the bill actually changes what is called the 
required minimum distribution rules.
  If you are in your late sixties or maybe turning 70, you may be 
shocked to have just found out that--guess what--you have to start 
distributing money out of the 401(k) that you have or the IRA that you 
have under what is call the required minimum distribution rules.

[[Page S5699]]

  My dad was a little surprised by that because he was still working at 
age 70\1/2\ when you have to start doing that.
  By the way, a lot of people back home are still working at age 70\1/
2\, and they want to keep their retirement nest egg there. They want to 
keep building it up because they hope they are going to live a long 
life, and they want make sure they have something in there, but 
instead, no, when you are 70\1/2\, you have to start taking it out and 
paying taxes on it.
  So we changed that from 70\1/2\ to 75. We do it over a few years 
because it is an expensive provision, frankly, in this bill, but we pay 
for it through other means. The idea is you want to let people keep 
that money in their nest egg. By the way, if your nest egg is $100,000 
or less, there is no minimum required distribution anymore under our 
bill.
  So for people who, again, are 70\1/2\ and are wondering, ``Why do I 
have to start taking this money out? I have 65,000 bucks I have saved 
up all these years, and I am still working,'' or ``I don't need to take 
it out for retirement,'' let them keep it in that plan. If there is 
under 100,000 bucks in your account, keep it in going forward forever. 
If you have more than 100,000 bucks in there, then for that additional 
amount, you don't have to start taking it out until you are 75, under 
our bill.
  So this is going to really help the people to ensure that they can 
set aside money for retirement, and they know it is going to be there 
when they need it.
  Our new Portman-Cardin retirement legislation has the potential to 
fundamentally reshape for the better how large numbers of Americans 
approach their retirement planning, and that is a good thing. I look 
forward to getting it passed through the Finance Committee and sent to 
the Senate floor for a vote.
  As I said earlier, even before we can get this broader package done, 
we have a smaller bill that is sitting here in the Senate. It has 
already passed the House. It is called the SECURE Act. It actually 
passed the House almost unanimously--417 to 3. That rarely happens, and 
that shows you the kind of bipartisan support it has. It is not as 
comprehensive as the bill I just talked about, but it does have some 
good provisions.
  It has that increase in the small employer tax credit, for instance, 
we talked about. It also raises this minimum required distribution to 
age 72--from 70\1/2\ to 72--which is good. It doesn't go to 75, and it 
doesn't have the $100,000 improvement we have, but it does help. It 
also helps long-term part-time workers contribute to 401(k)s, which is 
good.
  So we go further in our bill, but this SECURE Act is a good step in 
the right direction. I support it. I support bringing it up and passing 
it. It already passed the House.
  I do think we ought to allow a couple of amendments on each side 
because this SECURE Act that passed the House has not been voted on, on 
this floor before. It came out of our committee back in 2016, I 
believe, so it has been a while. There hasn't been any debate on it or 
deliberation. Why not allow a few amendments on it on each side?
  Democrats probably have a few amendments they would like to offer. 
Republicans have a few they would like to offer. The point is, let's 
get that bill up and get it passed.
  Then there is this final bill I was talking about. It is part of the 
SECURE Act, which is on the floor right now ready to go. It has also 
been introduced separately, and this is to address an urgent problem 
right now that is affecting over 450,000 Americans.
  Now, it gets a little complicated here, as retirement plans do 
sometimes. These are people who are in these defined benefit plans, 
pension plans, and they are in businesses that have shifted from a 
defined benefit plan to a defined contribution like a 401(k). These are 
businesses that have said: We are not going to have an additional 
pension anymore. We are going to go to a 401(k) where individuals 
contribute and individuals control their account.
  Now, what happened in some of these businesses is they said: But if 
you are already in a defined benefit plan, you can stay in. We are 
going to freeze your plan going forward so new employees can't go into 
it, but you can stay in your plan, and I think that is fair. Let people 
who are in the plan who have paid in all these years continue to stay 
in that defined benefit plan as they retire.
  The problem is, inadvertently, the rules with regard to pensions are 
tripping these people up because there is something called the 
nondiscrimination income testing. In other words, you can't have too 
many of the benefits go, in a defined benefit plan, to people who are 
more on the high end of income. It has to be spread out.
  Well, think about it. The people who are left in these plans are 
people who are older because the new employees have had to go to the 
defined contribution plan. So it is an older group of employees and, 
therefore, more highly compensated because they have been given raises 
over time, so they trigger this nondiscrimination income testing, and 
they lose their benefits. They can't continue to accrue benefits.
  That is just wrong. These are people who have played by the rules, 
done everything right. Through no fault of their own but through this 
quirky regulation, which was never meant to address this kind of an 
issue, they are facing the very real possibility--450,000-plus people--
that they are going to lose their benefits through no fault of their 
own. They should be able to continue to accrue benefits and get this 
retirement plan they have worked so hard to be able to enjoy. Nobody 
really disagrees.
  Again, it is in the SECURE Act. We have introduced it separately. 
Around here you run what is called a hotline with your fellow Senators 
to see if anybody objects to this if it is a noncontroversial piece of 
legislation.
  So we did that with this, and, guess what, this legislation was 
approved by everybody on the Republican side. Nobody had a problem with 
it. Again, it is just a question of being sure these flawed rules 
aren't inadvertently hurting these 450,000 Americans.
  Then we ran the hotline on the Democratic side, and it was also very 
popular over there, but at least one person objected--maybe more but at 
least one.
  So we are trying to work on this together to try to get it done. We 
found out the objection is not based on the legislation at all. No one 
has any problem with the legislation. It is based on their interest in 
not allowing anything that is in the SECURE Act to be done separately 
because they want to be sure the SECURE Act gets done. I want to be 
sure the SECURE Act gets done too. It is an important bill. It is the 
first step in the right direction, as we said, but let's not take it 
out on these employees. If we don't fix it, then by this yearend, like 
in the next couple of months here, these people are going to lose their 
benefits.
  So my hope is, now that we have tested the waters and found out it is 
not controversial among my colleagues, let's just bring it up under 
unanimous consent, get it done, and then let's move on and do the 
SECURE Act too.
  So my hope is we will be able to do that. It has been introduced, 
again, as a standalone bill. So it is not like it is the other parts of 
the SECURE Act that are only in the SECURE Act. It is standalone so it 
shouldn't violate anybody's sense of fairness to say: Let's deal with 
this separately and get it done.
  I thank Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Wyden for helping 
on this because they have been supportive of the SECURE Act, they have 
been supportive of dealing with this quirk in the law that deals with 
these 450,000 people who are going to lose their benefits, and they 
have been supportive of us doing this broader retirement savings 
package as well.
  I hope we can get them done. Let's do it in order. No. 1, let's get 
the Retirement Security Preservation Act done. That is the 450,000 
people, and let's just do that by unanimous consent. Everybody agrees 
to it.
  Let's move to the SECURE Act, get that done. Again, that was passed 
in the House almost unanimously, and then let's move on to this broader 
Portman-Cardin legislation we talked about tonight. It really deals 
with these issues of small business coverage. It deals with the issue 
of low-income workers needing to save more. It deals with the issue of 
part-time workers having to save more. It deals with this

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issue of being sure that people aren't outliving their retirement 
savings.
  Again, of the 50-plus provisions in there, there is a lot that really 
helps the people I represent back in Ohio and folks all around the 
country. They deserve us in Congress to be focused on these kinds of 
issues. This is exactly what people expect us to do here, help them 
ensure they have peace of mind in their retirement. We are doing all we 
can to provide the incentives to make that happen.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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