Treasury Disavows Pension 'Talking Points' Snow to Investigate IBM Distribution of Doctored Memo to Members of Congress By Albert B. Crenshaw Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, September 11, 2003; Page A09
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said yesterday that he would look into reports that International Business Machines Corp. lobbyists doctored a document to make it look as if the department opposed restrictions on cash-balance pensions. Treasury officials said later the matter has been referred to the department's inspector general. At issue is a document that IBM lobbyists sent to congressional offices stating that the department opposed an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.)., to its 2004 appropriations bill. The amendment, which the House approved Tuesday, would bar the department from writing regulations that are contrary to the finding of a federal judge that cash-balance plans violate age-discrimination laws. IBM was sued by some participants in its pension plan after it was converted to a cash-balance plan in 1999. While such plans usually provide more benefits to workers who change jobs frequently, they can reduce pensions for long-term workers. A federal judge in Illinois this summer found that IBM's plan, and by inference virtually all cash-balance plans, discriminate against older workers because of the way their formulas work. Treasury Department spokeswoman Tara Bradshaw disavowed the purported document, reported by the Wall Street Journal yesterday. It was labeled "Treasury talking points" and carried the headline "Treasury strongly opposes the Sanders amendment to the Transportation/Treasury appropriations bill." She told the Journal that the department had prepared, but not released, material on amendments Sanders had introduced last year but not on this year's provision. Yesterday, Bradshaw said she couldn't comment. Snow said at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee yesterday that he know of no authorized "talking points" on the amendment. "It is certainly something I intend to look into," he said. IBM spokesman Bill Hughes said the company is investigating the incident. Apparently, he said, "we believed that we were redistributing a public document that we had understood was widely distributed by Treasury." "We think, in an effort to make it clear that these were Treasury talking points, we reformatted the document to indicate it as coming from Treasury," but "in no way was the content or tone of document changed," he said. Sanders, in a letter to Snow yesterday, said "distribution of phony documents purporting to be from the Treasury Department goes beyond even the very loose ethical rules that lobbyists too often seem to follow in Washington." IBM has been lobbying for Treasury regulations that would say cash-balance plans do not discriminate by age. The department has proposed such rules, but it held off after some employers complained that they would curtail other types of pensions. Sanders's amendment would prohibit the department from spending any money on such rules. ==================================== To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any. [Les Paul]
