< The 2015 Pension 40: The Long Climb

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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

1. Bruce Rauner Illinois 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation Higher Taxes Could Reshape How Endowments and Foundations Think about Almost Everything Sponsored by Fidelity Investments June 16, 2025 3. Chris Christie New Jersey 4. Randi Weingarten AmericanFederation of Teachers 5. Phyllis Borzi U.S. Department of Labor

6. Kevin de León California 7. Alejandro García Padilla Commonwealth ofPuerto Rico 8. Laurence Fink BlackRock 9. Rahm Emanuel Chicago 10. Sean McGarvey North AmericanBuilding Trades Unions

11. John Kline Minnesota 12. J. Mark Iwry U.S. TreasuryDepartment 13. Damon Silvers AFL-CIO 14. Jeffrey Immelt General Electric Co. 15. Joshua Gotbaum Brookings Institution

16. Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. 17. Mark Mullet Washington 18. Terry O'Sullivan Laborers' International Union of North America 19. Raymond Dalio Bridgewater Associates 20. Ted Wheeler Oregon

21. Thomas Nyhan Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund 22. Karen Ferguson & Karen Friedman Pensions Rights Center 23. Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee forMultiemployer Plans 24. Robert O'Keef Motorola Solutions 25. Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley

26. Kenneth Feinberg The Law Offices of Kenneth R. Feinberg 27. Orrin Hatch Utah 28. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University 29. Ian Lanoff Groom Law Group 30. Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business

31. Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees' Retirement System 32. Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services 33. Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research 34. Denise Nappier Connecticut 35. W. Thomas Reeder Jr. Pension BenefitGuaranty Corp.

36. Hank Kim National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems 37. Paul Singer Elliott Management Corp. 38. Bailey Childers National PublicPension Coalition 39. Amy Kessler Prudential Financial 40. Judy Mares U.S. Labor Department