Industry Groups Press Lawmakers to Pass Secure Act 2.0

News November 18, 2022 at 02:44 PM
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Retirement and consumer groups along with various companies urged top lawmakers Thursday to "take quick action and pass" the package of bills currently being negotiated in Congress, known as Secure Act 2.0, as the lame-duck session of Congress kicks in.

Secure 2.0 "includes bipartisan, common-sense solutions to address the anxiety and insecurity workers and retirees have about their retirement security," groups — including the Insured Retirement Institute, American Council of Life Insurers, Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, American Benefits Council and the American Retirement Association — told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky; and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.

The components of Secure Act 2.0 "will encourage more employers to offer opportunities to save for retirement at work, make it easier and less costly for small businesses to offer retirement plans, and help ensure retirement savings last a lifetime," the groups wrote.

J. Mark Iwry, the head of national retirement policy during the Obama-Biden administration who's now a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said Wednesday, that House and Senate lawmakers are busy hammering out which provisions should be included in Secure Act 2.0. The bill, Iwry said, may contain up to 100 provisions and has been given a 40% chance of passage during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress.

ERISA attorney Brad Campbell, former head of the Labor Department's Employee Benefits Security Administration, who's now a partner at Faegre Drinker in Washington, said Thursday on the firm's Inside the Beltway webcast that if Secure Act 2.0 is not passed during the lame-duck, the legislation "will languish for the better part of next year. It's not as though it's dead, it's not as though interest has gone away and it has to start from ground zero — but it is a new Congress" come January.

The Republicans will now be the majority in the House, which means there will be "new and different" committee chairs. "There will be hearings and they have to reintroduce" the various legislation making up Secure Act 2.0.

"The likelihood is that it's just going to take some time to work through all that," Campbell said. "I think the bill is still alive. I think the bill is still something they want to have done, but it probably takes much of next year to have a bill that's likely to pass."

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