Rep Rallies Small Businesses Behind Alternative to DOL Fiduciary Rule

Calling the Department of Labor’s rule to amend the definition of fiduciary under ERISA “really, really aggressive” at “trying to crowd out” retirement savers from receiving advice, Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., said Monday that he’s bent on moving bipartisan legislation through the House and Senate to slow down DOL’s rule.

While there’s little bipartisan support for attaching a rider to an omnibus spending bill to defund DOL’s plan, there is another option, Roskam told attendees at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event Monday: “legislating.”

Roskam, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, was referring to a bill that he is co-sponsoring with Richard Neal, D-Mass.; Phil Roe, R-Tenn.; and Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., that sets out a series of legislative principles that will “help strengthen the retirement security of working families and ensure retirement advisors protect their clients’ best interests.”

Roe is a member of the Education and Workforce Committee, Neal is also a member of House Ways and Means, and Lujan Grisham is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

DOL’s agenda, Roskam told small businesses attending the Chamber’s Project Small Business Retirement event, is “to crowd the federal government into more and more places,” with the rule’s “long term” result being to “get the private sector out of the retirement space.”

Said Roskam: “I think we can come up with a bipartisan bill that frames this [fiduciary] issue up in a more thoughtful way.”