
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 3, 1995                   TAG: 9502030078
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

PENSION CUTS GET SUPPORT

Drives to scale back congressional pensions are receiving bipartisan support, with a House Republican seeking to eliminate lawmakers' traditional pensions and a Senate Democrat pushing quick hearings on a less dramatic change.

Strongly backed by freshmen Republicans, second-term Rep. Dan Miller, R-Fla., on Thursday introduced a bill that would wipe out the traditional pensions based on years of service and salaries in their last three years.

Miller would leave them only with their 401(k)-type tax-deferred savings plan, in which lawmakers contribute their own money. Miller would leave intact the federal match of lawmakers' contributions, but only for the first 12 years of service.

Twenty-two co-sponsors, all but two of them Republicans, joined Miller's plan.

``The salary is what makes people willing to come, but the pension could make them want to stay longer,'' said Miller, a strong supporter of term limits.

Neither Miller's plan nor the proposal of Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., would affect pensions already earned. But beginning in 1997, the proposals would change the way future benefits are calculated.

Not as potentially costly to lawmakers as Miller's plan, Bryan's proposal would force members of Congress to give up the lucrative retirement formula they gave only to themselves and their staffs. It would leave members and their employees with the same pension calculations as all federal employees in the executive branch.

by CNB