Bickering Stalls Pension Bill
The AP reports that partisan division in Congress is jeopardizing the pension-reform bill. The main point of contention appears to be the desire by some Republicans to insert unrelated tax-break measures into the legislation. From the AP story, published in the New York Times:
With the dispute, which centered on whether unrelated tax measures should be attached to the pension bill, Congress was in danger of missing yet another target for passing the bill that a majority of lawmakers see as essential to the retirement security of millions of Americans.
Lawmakers said they would try again Friday. ''There's still work to do,'' said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
House and Senate negotiators originally set Tax Day, April 15, as their deadline. When that passed, they aimed for Memorial Day, and then Independence Day. Failure to reach a deal Friday, as the House prepares to leave for the August recess, would push consideration of the legislation past Labor Day.
The bill, years in the making, is meant to strengthen traditional employer-based pension plans, cers were adamant that a package of tax breaks should be pulled from the pension bill so the House could use those popular tax breaks as a vehicle to move a $300 billion estate tax cut through Congress.
The Senate, which has rejected the estate tax cut, objected, and when Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., the chairman of the House-Senate conference, called a meeting of conferees Thursday to vote on the issue, House Republicans refused to attend.
Sen. Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, sharply criticized House Republicans for what he said was reneging on an earlier agreement to attach the tax breaks, valued at $35 billion over two years, to the pension bill. ''I'll continue to keep my word even if I am knifed in the back.''