Mr. President, I am pleased to join the Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Cochran] in introducing S. 1232, the Federal Erroneous Retirement Coverage Corrections Act. This legislation provides relief to those federal employees who were placed in an incorrect retirement system during the transition to the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) from the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) in the mid-1980s.

As the ranking Democrat on the International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services Subcommittee, I am committed to correcting the erroneous pension problems facing anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 individuals. S. 1232 provides a reasonable solution in affording misclassified federal workers, former employees, retirees, and survivors with equitable relief from these retirement coverage errors. Moreover, the measure gives those affected a choice between corrected retirement coverage and the coverage the employee expected to receive, without disturbing Social Security coverage law.

Similar legislation was offered in 1998, and my colleague, the chairman of the Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, held a hearing on the measure at which officials from the Office of Personnel Management and the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board testified in support of the bill.

I believe this measure addresses the concerns of federal workers who have been placed in the wrong retirement system. It offers a workable and reasonable solution, and I ask my colleagues to support this legislation. I also wish to note that S. 1232 enjoys the support of the Office of Personnel Management and the two largest federal employee unions, the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union, who are encouraged by the bipartisan effort that went into crafting this bill.