Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. (Photo: Callaghan O'Hare/Bloomberg)
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, released Monday a new proposal for a public 401(k) option as a companion to his health care proposals.
Buttigieg "is proposing to create a government-run 401(k) plan that would be attached to Social Security," said Brian Graff, president and CEO of the American Retirement Association in Washington.
"Similar to his health insurance proposal, employers with existing defined benefit plans would be able to keep those plans," Graff explained. "Employers with existing defined contribution plans would be able to keep their plans as long as they met minimum requirements including a 3% contribution requirement on behalf of employees."
Buttigieg "is subscribing to the view of many of his other Democratic presidential candidate colleagues that the government always does it better," Graff opined.
On his website, Buttigieg states that "as Baby Boomers continue to approach retirement, more and more Americans are confronting the challenges of aging. After full careers, many Americans continue working longer because they can't afford to retire. For the first time in our nation's history, there will be more older adults than children. In 2020, half of adults who reach 65 will require long-term care. By 2026, we will require 7.8 million new care jobs. At the same time, more and more Americans are becoming eligible for Social Security — even as the Trump Administration has attempted to undermine Americans' retirement by cutting billions of dollars from Social Security over the next decade."
