Ohio Senator Rob Portman had more reason to celebrate than just about anyone when the SECURE Act, the most significant retirement reform legislation in 15 years, became law as of Jan. 1, 2020.
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“I’ve been trying to get this done; not just since last May when we started working on it at the Senate, but even before that, going back to 2016, [when] we had a report down in committee, but never got it to the floor,” Portman told 401(k) Specialist in an exclusive interview in January.
Indeed, the Republican lawmaker was not only an architect of the more substantive provisions that ended up in the “Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019,” he was also perhaps its most passionate advocate, providing some compelling speeches on the Senate floor as the bill spent more than six months collecting dust on the desk of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
This was after the bill, thanks to a push from House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) along with Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI), Ways & Means Committee Ranking Member Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), and Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), was approved back on May 23 by the House of Representatives in a 417-3 vote.
Due to its overwhelming bipartisan support in the House, there was plenty of optimism that the Senate would fast-track the SECURE Act’s road to President Trump’s desk via unanimous consent.
At the time, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, predicted quick passage for the most important federal retirement legislation since the Pension Protection Act of 2006—including a variety of provisions specifically designed to make it easier for Americans to save for retirement through the use of 401(k) plans.
But things don’t often happen fast in Washington D.C., and the SECURE Act stalled after several Senators decided to place “holds” on the bill due to a variety of concerns mostly non-related to the retirement savings issue.
The holds, the most high-profile of which being from Texas Senator Ted Cruz over House Democrats’ last-minute removal of a provision that would have allowed 529 plan funds to be used for homeschooling, were never resolved. Numerous efforts by supporters to bring the SECURE Act up for a vote in the Senate seemed to fall on deaf ears, as McConnell reserved “valuable floor time” for matters mainly involving the appointment of federal judges.
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That left just one last realistic hope, or the bill would expire at the end of last year and its reforms would have to start the legislative road all over again—a particularly dicey proposition in a presidential election year, not to mention a divisive impeachment trial.
That last hope was getting the SECURE Act attached to a broader “must-pass” federal spending bill for fiscal year 2020—something that happened when Congressional staffers included it in the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act 2020, a $1.4 trillion package passed by the House and Senate before President Trump signed it into law on Dec. 20.
With that, the SECURE Act became law, bringing with it a number of consequential changes designed to broaden access to 401(k) plans for small businesses and their employees, while also making it easier for plan sponsors to include lifetime income options within them.
