Word: reformer
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...Connell, who is not running for office again, is pushing for the nation's largest pension funds - those in California, New York and Texas - to lead reform in on 401(k) and accounting practices by themselves. "I have no confidence in Congress seeing any significant reform through," she says. "But we represent about 10 percent of all stock ownership in the country, and we can hammer through changes regardless of Congress - if we are emphatic about not investing in companies that don't change certain practices...
Three days later, at a lush West Virginia resort where congressional Republicans were holding their annual retreat, they heard the same news. G.O.P. strategists told the lawmakers that voter rage over Enron is becoming personal, with people's fears about their own retirement exceeding their appetite for campaign reform and their anger at what the now bankrupt company did. "Many employees looked at what happened to Enron, and it scares them to death," says Ohio Congressman John Boehner, the House Republicans' point man on pension issues. This is why the biggest news out of the retreat was the package...
...approaching retirement age. That group votes more dependably than any other, especially in off-year elections, and now includes the leading edge of the baby boom, 76 million strong. Democrats are well practiced at exploiting the group's fears. In 1982 the party stoked anxiety about Social Security reform and picked up 26 seats in the House; in 1986 the same issue toppled the G.O.P. majority that Ronald Reagan had swept into the Senate. And in 1995 Bill Clinton faced down Newt Gingrich and his plan to overhaul Medicare; two government shutdowns and one year later, the issue nearly...
Republicans say the Democrats are already overplaying their hand. But Republicans are fighting back just the same. Bush's new pension-reform plan seeks to fix some of the things that went wrong for Enron employees, and like-minded G.O.P.-sponsored measures are going off like popcorn in both the House and the Senate. The proposals don't go as far as Democrats want, but businesses fret that they are just an opening bid. Too many restrictions, the lobbyists say, will discourage companies from making any matching contributions to employee retirement funds...
...every level. So the Democrats, who usually balk at limiting the ability to sue, accepted the idea of an airline bailout--as long as it came with a mechanism to compensate victims. Oklahoma Senator Don Nickles, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and a longtime proponent of tort reform, pushed hard to limit how much the victims' families could claim, but he did not prevail...