Scott Slams Bad GOP Retirement Plan Bill

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to H.R. 2988, the Protecting Prudent Investment of Retirement Savings Act. This bill is premised on the Republicans' mistaken belief that they know best when it comes to investing workers' retirement savings. Under the present law, the retirement plan fiduciaries are required to make prudent investment decisions in the best interest of plan participants and beneficiaries. The bill codifies two rules from the first Trump administration that imposed first of their kind restrictions on plan fiduciaries' abilities to consider what are called environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, factors for making investment decisions and exercise shareholder rights. The appropriate course of action is to permit fiduciaries to consider ESG factors so long as they don't diminish investment returns. As we know, such factors, whether it be sea-level rise or poor corporate governance, are relevant to a company's performance. Considering whether a real estate investment will literally be underwater because of sea-level rise is not ideology. It is sensible for plan fiduciaries to be permitted to consider such factors and to be able to adopt them if they don't reduce investment returns, and that's precisely what the rule from the Biden administration permitted. Predictably, the Trump administration is walking away from that rule, and now the House is continuing to go in the wrong direction. For example, H.R. 2988 would impose unnecessary barriers to considering things like sea-level rise. The supporters are making up some risk, suggesting that some of these funds may be worse than others. I think the studies show that they're as good or better, in fact, than others. And meanwhile, the Trump administration appears to be porous to green-light what are clearly consensus-held risky investments, such as cryptocurrency, and put those in retirement plans. That makes no sense at all. Finally, H.R. 2988 would undermine the worthwhile efforts to increase diversity among asset managers. There are about $82 trillion in financial assets in retirement funds. Only 1.4% of those assets are managed by women or minority firms. Women and minorities represent about two-thirds of the population. They're managing 1.4% of the assets. Now, apparently, that creates a problem. And the problem is, how did they get the 1.4%? How did the good old boys lose 1.4%? And so they're going to change the rules to limit access to women and minority-owned firms. This bill would needlessly undermine what little progress has been made and actually raise questions about what problem we're trying to solve. We should be trusting our professionals bound by law, not House Republicans, to make sound decisions about Americans' retirement savings. And for those reasons, to oppose the bill, I encourage my colleagues to do the same and reserve the balance of my time.