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The 2015 Pension 40: Orrin Hatch

No. 27 Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator / Utah

By Tyler Davies

December 22, 2015

< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb

Orrin Hatch

U.S. Senator / Utah

Last year’s rank: 16

As the second-most-senior member of the U.S. Congress, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, 81, is a veteran of the U.S. retirement wars. In 2013, Hatch, a Utahan who had served in the Senate since 1977, proposed the Secure Annuities for Employee (SAFE) Retirement Act. The bill extends multiple-employer savings plans to small businesses and encourages underfunded public pensions to buy annuities (thus shifting pension plans and their funding shortfalls from local governments to insurers). Hatch failed to get the bill through the Democratically controlled Senate, but his hope was renewed when the GOP won control of the Senate in last year’s midterm elections. In January 2015 the Pennsylvania native, who earned a JD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in 1962, took over as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees retirement policy. Among his top priorities: new retirement savings incentives, including passage of his SAFE Retirement Act. “I remain convinced that my plan represents the best solution to the growing pension crisis in America,” Hatch said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in January. Critics of the plan, which features a low-cost “starter 401(k)” and automatic enrollment, are particularly opposed to its intention to move ERISA oversight from the Labor Department to the Treasury Department. They also argue that the switch to annuities doesn’t address the bigger issue: the shortage of private sector savings. With Congress mostly gridlocked and a presidential election looming, Hatch has made little progress on the legislation in the 11 months he’s been committee chairman.

The 2015 Pension 40