In a Senate consumed by partisanship, pension reform has offered at least a glimmer of bipartisan hope, particularly on the Senate Finance Committee. Last year seven-term Utah Republican Orrin Hatch introduced a bill to overhaul public and private pensions: the Secure Annuities for Employee (SAFE) Retirement Act, which would create a fixed annuity pension plan for state and local governments with minimal federal involvement and no federal taxes, implement a new starter 401(k) plan and return jurisdiction over 401(k)s and IRAs to the Treasury Department from Labor. Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, agreed to bring up the SAFE Act to the committee in July, and in September the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank, recognized the bill as a contender for addressing the pension crisis. Wyden will lose his chairmanship after the Republican takeover of the Senate in January to the ranking Republican, Hatch, 80. “I’ve become concerned that there is a political strategy by some in Congress to turn pension policy into just another partisan battleground,” Hatch says. “They would turn retirement policy into another front in the class warfare that consumes so much energy on some of the other committees in Congress.” Now Hatch has every opportunity to advance the SAFE Retirement Act to the floor.
16
Orrin Hatch
U.S. Senator
Utah
Last year: 17
The 2014 Pension 40