< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
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John Kline
U.S. Representative
Minnesota
PNR
John Kline came to his congressional pension oversight role almost by accident. After 25 years in the Marine Corps, Kline — a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and Somalia who transported Ronald Reagan in Marine One and carried the “nuclear football” (a briefcase containing the top-secret options and codes) in the early ’80s — was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002 from Minnesota’s Second District. He served on the Armed Services Committee, but when then-chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, current Speaker John Boehner, asked Kline to join him there, “at his insistence I came on.” As the senior Republican on the health, employment, labor and pensions subcommittee, Kline helped frame the Pension Protection Act of 2006. In 2010 he succeeded Boehner as chairman of the full committee. “I’m working on all sorts of education-related issues,” Kline, 67, says, “but pensions don’t want to let go.” The No. 1 pension issue, he contends, is how to address underfunded multiemployer plans. “I would love to get that solved in the lame-duck session,” he says. “I’m pushing as hard as I can.” Kline supports Randy DeFrehn’s (No. 6) “Solutions Not Bailouts” agenda and has been pressing Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis Borzi (No. 15) to slow her ongoing efforts to apply a fiduciary standard to providers of investment advice. He believes extending the more rigorous standard from advisers to fund salespeople “will make it difficult for smaller investors to get the advice they need.”
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 |
