Obama pledges to help protect workers' pensions

FAIRFIELD, Iowa -- On the stump and in new TV ads, Democrat Barack Obama is focusing on baby boomers' retirement worries and targeting companies that "leave workers high and dry."

Campaigning in Iowa on Thursday, Obama said, "Americans who work hard their entire lives have earned a retirement that is secure and dignified." Washington is doing too little, he said, but his plans "will lift up savings for working people and reform bankruptcy laws to protect your pensions."

Earlier in the week, Obama outlined proposals he said would help working families, and he spent Thursday focusing on one portion of that package -- retirement security.

He began airing new television ads in Iowa on the issue, and held a round-table discussion on pensions. It's a crucial issue for members of the baby boom generation, millions of whom are on the verge of retirement even as many companies are dumping their pension plans.

Obama began airing a new ad featuring David Hartgrave, a Cedar Rapids man whose pension was undermined when his company turned its obligations over to the Federal Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. That left Hartgrave with a pension of only $379 a month, the ad says.

"I'm telling CEOs it hurts America when they cash out and leave workers high and dry," Obama says in the commercial. "It's an outrage. You've got to have somebody in the White House who believes it's an outrage."

Under the pension plan Obama spelled out this week, employers would be required to enroll workers in a direct deposit retirement account that invests a small percentage of each paycheck. Workers would have a choice of opting out or adding to the account. The account could be taken with the worker to a new job.

Obama's plan would also add new protections for worker pensions when companies declare bankruptcy.

In the new commercial, Hartgrave spells out his story.

"I worked here for 33 years, did everything they asked me to do," he says. "The executives decided to take $19 million out of our pension fund, didn't return it. Thought I was going to be getting $1,500 a month, I only got $379."

Obama is in the midst of a five-day swing through the state where precinct caucuses will launch the presidential nominating season in less than two months. His campaign day opened with a rally before about 300 people in Fairfield, before heading to a town hall meeting and round-table discussion on pensions in Ottumwa, a blue-collar, heavily Democratic city.

Obama held the round-table with seven people, some retired and some not.

He discussed his plans to revamp bankruptcy laws to protect pensions and his proposal of government-based retirement accounts for people earning less than $70,000 a year.

Bob Beisch, 69, told Obama that his son-in-law was trying to start a small business, and Obama assured him his plan wouldn't require small businesses to contribute to a retirement account, only to set it up.

"Maybe I'll get him to vote Democratic yet," said Beisch.

At the Ottumwa town hall meeting, Obama was asked about politicians who promise change but do little once elected.

"A lot of people feel like you, that nothing is going to change," said Obama. "If all of us decide that nothing is going to change, then nothing is going to change. What the wise guys and the fats cats are counting on is you get so cynical you give up."

Polls have shown Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton with a big lead nationally but in a tight race with Obama and former Sen. John Edwards for Iowa's leadoff caucuses, set for Jan. 3. Clinton spent four days in the state this week, and Obama is stumping for five days leading up to the Iowa Democratic Party's biggest annual fundraiser Saturday night where all the major candidates will speak.

Obama was sounding sharply populist themes, vowing to change not just the party in the White House but the politics of Washington.

"I reject the cynicism that has become so prominent in Washington," Obama said in Fairfield, rejecting criticism that his single term in the Senate isn't enough to qualify him to be president.

"They want me to stew, they want to boil the hope out of me in Washington," said Obama.

Obama ended his day before about 400 people in Knoxville, where he decried plans to close a local veterans medical facility when troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will need its services.

He also told the audience he's the most electable of the Democrats, claiming that 55 percent of Republicans in his home state of Illinois approve of him.

"I've got appeal that goes beyond our party," Obama said.