In Howard Dean's speech at the Take Back America 2005 conference he mentions pension portability, and that Democrats have a "positive plan of portability and independent control of pensions".
Here's an excerpt:
"we need to have pension portability, so that as we move from job to job pensions follow us along. Pension plans ought not be controlled by companies, they should be controlled [by the people who own them]."
More below the fold...
Enron began around the time Bush took office. Forty thousand Americans lost their pensions. Another tens of thousands lost theirs just last week, when the courts took away the United Airlines workers' pensions. This is a serious problem. The president has had his time, he's done nothing... We have a positive plan of portability and independent control of pensions outside the corporations that abuse the money. This is stealing to let pension plans go down like this. That money does not belong to those companies that use it to bail themselves out of bankruptcies. It belongs to the people who earned them. We want these pensions in America to be independently run, so that they aren't looted by CEOs who are in the throes of bankruptcy who make $30 or $40 million a year. That is wrong.
So does anyone know more about this plan? It sounds interesting and different from the same old same old. The whole speech is great and really worth reading.