Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, discussed the SECURE Act and its possible successor, SECURE 2.0, during a live webcast on Thursday hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center and simulcast by Yahoo! Finance.
The session, titled Boosting Financial Resiliency for U.S. Workers, also featured financial pundit and personality Jean Chatzky and AARP Executive Vice President Debra Whitman.
“We went from the best economy in 90 years to the worst economy in 90 years over a few weeks,” Brady noted in his opening remarks. “We’ve battled back as a nation …but there is no question that there is more work to be done and it has had an impact on retirement savings.”
Frequently referencing Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., his counterpart on the House Ways and Means Committee, Brady said they concentrated on a group of Americans who have always had the hardest time saving—low-income individuals and those that work for small businesses.
“To Richie’s credit, when we had our first discussion, we focused on doing most of our work here,” he explained. “We think auto-enrollment is very important and gets people saving earlier. Auto-escalation helps to build towards a more secure future. These are defaults to saving that we both support.
SECURE Act incentives
He also said they put a “great deal of incentives” into helping small businesses create savings plans, including credits for 100% of their administrative costs, up to $5,000.
“We go further, in effect, matching their first $1,000 of contributions for their workers,” Brady added. “It’s not just helping people save more; it’s helping people save earlier.”
The other element in the SECURE Act of which he said he was particularly pleased was raising the required minimum distribution (RMD) age to 72.
“My goal is to get rid of it completely,” he concluded. “We take another step forward [in SECURE 2.0] by increasing that age to 75 and exempting those more modest accounts of $100,000 or less. We’re working longer, we want people to save longer. We want them to be able to grow their retirement longer. There are a lot of elements that a lot of congressional members have put good work into.”