[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 38 (Tuesday, February 28, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S510-S511]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               INFLATION

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, Washington Democrats' reckless spending 
has embedded painful inflation deep in our economy. Runaway prices are 
making families' monthly budgets harder to balance. And as interest 
rates rise, the financial markets where millions of Americans invest 
their life savings are becoming literally more volatile.
  Short-term bond yields are trading at their highest levels since the 
precipice of the Great Recession in 2007. Indications of expected stock 
market volatility appear to be actually on the upswing.
  But with Americans' retirement accounts already in jeopardy, 
Democrats have gone looking for still more ways to put workers' savings 
at even greater risk. The Biden administration is trying to enact a 
radical new regulation that would help liberals use Americans' very own 
retirement savings as financial muscle for political causes they may 
not even support.
  The Labor Department's proposed new rule would water down financial 
managers' fiduciary obligation to get the best return for their 
clients. This administration wants to let the fund managers prioritize 
extraneous factors--from companies' carbon footprints to various HR 
policies--when deciding where to invest hard-working Americans' 
savings.
  The Biden administration wants to let Wall Street use its workers' 
hard-earned savings to pursue leftwing political initiatives instead of 
trying to maximize the returns for their clients' retirements. 
Democrats want to let money managers making these unrelated ideological 
goals a higher priority than getting their clients, ordinary American 
workers, the best returns for their own retirements.
  Not surprisingly, studies suggest that investment funds where the 
managers put a political thumb on the scale in this particular fashion 
tend, not surprisingly, to underperform normal investments. When you 
put ideology ahead of seeking the highest returns, well, the returns, 
of course, suffer. And if the Democrats have their way, the losers will 
be ordinary American workers who have spent their whole careers putting 
money away for their retirement. In effect, we are talking about 
letting financial companies garnish the retirement savings of workers, 
without their permission, in order to pursue unrelated liberal 
political goals.
  The Biden administration wants to put American workers in a position 
where portions of their potential returns on their retirement savings 
could be effectively donated away to leftwing political causes without 
their consent.

[[Page S511]]

  What a disastrous way to pile onto the pain they have already caused 
millions of American families.
  I am grateful to my colleague from Indiana, Senator Braun, and to my 
friend and fellow Kentuckian Congressman   Andy Barr for leading a 
bipartisan resolution in both Houses to make sure that Americans' 
retirement accounts are about one thing: maximizing returns on 
investments. I will be proud to support this commonsense measure later 
this week.

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