This content is from: Corner Office
The 2015 Pension 40: Orrin Hatch
No. 27 Orrin Hatch, U.S. Senator / Utah


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.
![]() 2. John & Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation ![]() 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 |