[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.
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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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