< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
16
Orrin Hatch
U.S. Senator
Utah
Last year: 17
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.
The 2014 Pension 40
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Bruce Rauner Illinois | John and Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation | Randi Weingarten American Federation of Teachers | Rahm Emanuel Chicago | David Boies Boies, Schiller & Flexner |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans | Damon Silvers AFL-CIO | Laurence Fink BlackRock | Chris Christie New Jersey | Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees’ Retirement System | John Kline Minnesota | J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department | Gina Raimondo Rhode Island | Phyllis Borzi U.S. Labor Department |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Orrin Hatch Utah | Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments | Ted Wheeler Oregon | Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley | James Hoffa International Brotherhood of Teamsters |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Amy Kessler Prudential Financial | Alejandro García Padilla Puerto Rico | Christopher Klein U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia | Steven Rhodes Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan | Kevin de León California |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| David Draine Pew Charitable Trusts | Jordan Marks National Public Pension Coalition | Sam Liccardo California | Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business | Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman Pension Rights Center |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| Timothy Blake Moody’s Investors Service | Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University | Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services | Daniel Loeb Third Point | Judy Mares Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Andrew Biggs American Enterprise Institute | Andy Stern Columbia University | Kenneth Mehlman KKR & Co. | Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research | A. Melissa Moye U.S. Treasury Department |
