President Obama will propose in his 2017 budget new rules that would make it easier for small businesses to join together to form 401(k) retirement plans for their workers, even if the businesses are in different industries, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
Citing administration officials, the paper said that the proposal, if accepted by the Republican-led Congress, “could make retirement plans available to more people by reducing administrative costs and compliance issues, which are sometimes too great for a single small business to bear.”
“We need to find new ways to help working families build up a nest egg,” Jeffrey D. Zients, the director of Obama’s National Economic Council, told the Times. He said that retirement plans were not currently available to more than half of all workers at businesses that employ fewer than 50 people.
Zients said that retirement plans were “an important component of attracting and retaining workers,” and that he was optimistic that both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill would support the president’s proposals.