[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 3, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2690-S2692]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  CONGRESSIONAL REVIEW ACT RESOLUTION

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to talk about the 
CRA resolution pending before the Senate today.
  I really can't keep track of when my colleagues on the Republican 
side are for State innovation and when they are against State 
innovation.
  When it comes to Medicaid, the Republicans seem to be very willing to 
hand a bunch of money over to the States, no strings attached, and let 
them figure out what to do with it. That is the essence of the bill 
that cuts $800 billion from Medicaid that is pending before the House 
of Representatives today. When it comes to retirement, right now we are 
engaged in a debate that would rip away from States the ability to 
innovate on behalf of their constituents to try to get them access to 
retirement savings.
  I can't figure out when my Republican friends want States to innovate 
and when they want to take away from States the ability to deliver 
results to their constituents.
  Let's be honest. We have a retirement crisis in this country right 
now. The majority of Americans barely have enough money saved to last 2 
or 3 years after they retire. Everybody knows this. And the people who 
are affected by this retirement crisis aren't exclusively Democrats. 
They aren't exclusively Republicans. They aren't just liberals. They 
aren't just conservatives. No matter where you live, today you are more 
likely than not to not have enough money in order to retire. So States 
have figured this out. My State is one of them.
  Many States have recognized that one of the biggest barriers to 
retirement savings today is the fact that if you work for a small 
employer, you probably don't have an employer-sponsored retirement 
plan. In fact, there are over 50 million Americans today who do not 
have, through their employer, a retirement plan available to them.
  Why is that a big deal? Well, it is a big deal because that is the 
most likely way you save today. In fact, for those 50 million Americans 
who don't have access to retirement through their employer, only 5 
percent of them are going outside of their employer to set up a 
retirement plan. There are a variety of reasons for that. Sometimes,

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people who are working for a company that doesn't offer retirement are 
making such a small amount of money, they simply don't have the means 
to save, but many more simply look at the private retirement savings 
industry as so convoluted and confusing, so opaque, that they don't 
even attempt to intersect with it.
  So we know we have a problem on our hands. We know there are all 
these Americans who cannot get retirement through their employer, 
largely because they work for small employers. We know that if you 
don't get your retirement through your employer, you are unlikely to go 
out and get it on your own.
  Employers would love to do more for their employees. This isn't about 
employers not wanting to provide a retirement plan for their employees. 
The problem is that for an employer who only has 3 or 4 or 5 or 10 or 
15 employees, it is prohibitively expensive to provide a retirement 
plan.
  A recent op-ed from an Oregon business owner showed that for him, it 
would cost about $1,100 per employee just in fees to establish a 
retirement plan. That is not even counting any possible contribution 
the employer would make. So you can see that for a small restaurant 
owner or a small retail grocer, they are not likely to provide a 
retirement plan to their six employees when it costs them $1,000 per 
employee to do it. Their employees are on their own. Again, very few of 
them are actually going and setting up their own retirement.
  Why does this matter to us? Well, it matters to us first because I 
think we have a policy obligation to try to help people save for 
retirement, but it also matters to us here in Washington because to the 
extent people don't have retirement, they are going to be more likely 
dependent on the programs that are already busting our budget, like 
Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. If you don't have any 
retirement savings, then you are going to go on Medicaid much earlier, 
meaning the Federal expenditure that we are all on the hook for, and 
all of our constituent taxpayers are on the hook for, starts getting 
spent earlier. So, just as a matter of fiscal prudence, we should be 
helping people pile up private retirement savings because it will 
result in less liability for public retirement programs. Yet we are not 
doing that.

  We talk a lot about trying to help people save for retirement, but we 
are not passing any groundbreaking legislation that helps Americans to 
save for retirement. Senator Isakson and I have this small little bill 
that says on your retirement statement it should just tell you that if 
you continue to save at a current amount--this is for people who have 
employer-sponsored plans--this is how much you will get per year when 
you retire, just so there is some transparency, so that people can look 
at the amount they are putting away and be able to clearly and easily 
understand whether that is going to actually be able to pay for their 
expenses when they retire. We can't even get that piece of legislation 
passed through the Congress. That is just a transparency provision.
  Let's be honest. The industry is not providing answers either. The 
industry has had decades to try to figure out how to be more relevant 
for individuals who don't have an employer-sponsored plan. That number 
is still at 5 percent. So the industry, maybe hamstrung by Federal 
rules or State rules, has not been able to fill this void.
  So we have this massive number of people who don't have anywhere near 
the money necessary to retire. The Federal Government is not providing 
any answers and private industry is not providing enough answers, so 
States have begun to pick up the ball.
  Here is what States are doing. I think there are about 12 States that 
have either adopted this kind of program that I am about to describe or 
are in the process of adopting it. States like Connecticut have said: 
OK. Here is what we are going to do. For employees who don't have an 
employer-sponsored plan, we are going to allow for those employees to 
enroll in a private retirement plan, with the State as the conduit.
  If the employer can't do it because the fees are too much, then we 
will give those employees the option to enroll in a private retirement 
plan, have a portion of their earnings withheld with the State as the 
conduit. OK. States are deciding to do this. It is supported by 
constituents across the ideological spectrum. I looked at a survey the 
other day that said that amongst self-identified conservative voters, 
three-quarters of them wanted States to be able to have the ability to 
set up these conduit accounts for people who don't have retirement 
through their employer. Connecticut has done this; a handful of other 
States have done it.
  The Federal Government needed to clarify, through regulation, how 
ERISA rules would apply to these State innovations. Why? Well, because 
ERISA is really designed to regulate the relationship between an 
employer and the plan they sponsor and the employee. But in the case of 
these State-backed retirement plans, there is no traditional employee-
employer relationship between the person who is enrolled in the plan 
and the State of Connecticut, in this instance, which is providing the 
access to the private plan. So a regulation was proffered by the Obama 
administration that clarified that ERISA rules will not apply to these 
plans in the same way they apply to the traditional employer-sponsored 
retirement plans.
  ERISA is just a mismatch for this State-based innovation. It seems 
like a pretty routine regulatory function--the Federal Government 
clarifying how ERISA rules should apply to those State-based 
innovations. Nobody had a problem with this, except for the big 
retirement companies--except for the big Wall Street companies that 
invented, in their minds, that they would be losing business to these 
State innovations whereby individuals would get enrolled in private 
accounts through a State-endorsed conduit.
  There are two problems with that. First, the States are not running 
these retirement plans. All the State is doing is providing access for 
individuals to a privately run fund. Second, it is not taking any 
business away from these retirement plans because these people were not 
going to private retirement plans in the first place. Only 5 percent of 
people who did not have retirement through their employer were finding 
a way to a privately run plan themselves. So there was no risk that 
Wall Street or these big retirement funds were going to lose business.
  We don't need to do this just because the big retirement companies 
have imagined in their minds that they are not going to have access to 
a set of business that they were not offering in a way that was 
relevant or cost-effective.
  You know, Republicans are either for State-based innovation or they 
are not. You can't be for State-based innovation when it aligns with a 
special interest, and then be against it when it misaligns with a 
special interest. States are innovating to solve a problem that we are 
not solving. Connecticut--we are representative of other States that 
have done this.
  The consequences of what we are about to do are real. You are talking 
about 600,000 people in my State who had access to retirement savings 
who will have it ripped away from them if this CRA passes. That is 
real. When you combine all of the States together that have passed 
these innovative retirement plan programs, the number is 12 million.
  If your State does not want to do it, they don't have to. If Arkansas 
does not want to do it or Wyoming does not want to do it, if Tennessee 
does not want to do it, they don't have to. But why take away from the 
people of Connecticut the ability to set up a way for employees of very 
small businesses to save for retirement? Why do you care what we do in 
Connecticut if that is what my constituents want? Is it just because 
the big retirement companies told you that they were going to lose 
business? That is not true. But even if it is, it should be up to the 
people of Connecticut as to whether we innovate in a way to try to 
provide more retirement savings to the people of our State. It does not 
hurt Republican Members if Connecticut does it or California does it.
  It feels as if we are scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes 
to these CRAs. It feels as if we are going out and asking every special 
interest group whether they have any remaining problems, minor as they 
may be, with regulations that were passed at the end of the 
administration and opening the floor to any and all.

[[Page S2692]]

  I know there are Republicans who are going to vote no. I know there 
are some Republicans who have a deep problem with the fact that the 
Congress is taking away from States the ability to innovate on the 
question of retirement.
  I hope there are enough that this CRA goes down because the 
consequences to many of our States will be big. Frankly, it will chill 
any State's interest in trying to solve this problem because you are 
telegraphing that anytime a State tries to step in and deliver more 
access to retirement, if it slightly rubs the big retirement companies 
the wrong way, you are going to step in and take that power away from 
them. So why would a State step in ever again to try to do something 
for people who need access to retirement?
  If my Republican friends are coming to this floor with a really sound 
plan to replace the plan that we developed in Connecticut--if 
Republicans said: Do you know what? I don't think that it makes sense 
to do this in a patchwork way, this State innovating this way, this 
State innovating that way; we are going to come in and pass a really 
comprehensive approach to giving people who work for small companies 
access to retirement. That is a reasonable conversation to have, but 
you are not.
  Republicans are not offering the people of my State any alternative. 
All they are doing is robbing from 12 million Americans the ability to 
get access to retirement. This is a crisis. If we are not going to deal 
with it and the industry is not going to deal with it, let States deal 
with it.
  This is a terrible, terrible thing that we are doing later today. I 
think it is going to be a really close vote because I think there are 
Republicans who know it. I hope there are a few more who think about 
the message being sent to the States. Think about the fact that on one 
day you are for State-based innovation, and the next day you are 
against it.
  We have time to allow for States to continue these innovations. I 
hope we will take advantage of it.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut, who 
frames this exactly correctly on the vote that we are about to take on 
a motion to proceed to yet another CRA that will be another broken 
promise on the part of President Trump and Republicans. President Trump 
said that he would help workers and put them first. But the legislation 
we are about to move to will get in the way of our States' efforts to 
expand access to retirement savings programs, which is something that 
so many workers in this country really need.
  President Trump said that he would drain the swamp, but by rolling 
back this rule in question, as Republicans are proposing today, 
President Trump and his party are sending yet another very clear 
message, on top of many others in the last 100 days. They are listening 
to Wall Street rather than working families.
  This rule--all it does is clarify an existing safe harbor that 
affords flexibility to States that want to give workers more options 
for their retirement. It is not complicated. It would do a lot of good 
for families across the country, including in my home State of 
Washington.
  I will have a lot more to say this afternoon, as I know many of our 
colleagues will, but this is about taking away the options for people's 
retirement security. I hope the Senate will turn this down.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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