US (AFR) : WALL STREET is coming for teachers and nurses retirement savings.

 

Teachers spend decades educating the children who will grow up to be the next generation of leaders. Nurses care for us through moments of pain, fear, and discomfort. Now Wall Street wants Congress to weaken the protections covering their retirement savings, and the House could help them do it as soon as Thursday. After sweeping midterm election results where voters made their priorities clear, the first thing Congress could decide to do is find another way for Wall Street to rip people off. How ridiculous is that? People are calling for more financial security and relief from crushing costs, and it’s absurd for Congress to return to Washington with another giveaway to the financial industry at the top of its agenda. The so-called Retirement Fairness for Charities and Educational Institutions Act, H.R. 1013, would weaken safeguards for 403(b) retirement plans used by teachers, nurses, other healthcare workers, and nonprofit employees. It would open these plans to investment products exempt from federal securities registration. This would expose savers to sales by unregistered brokers operating outside of consumer protection standards that apply to registered brokers and investment advisers. The immediate fight is in the House, where a vote could happen this week. And the Senate is also considering fast-tracking the same provisions before the end of the year—and the swearing in of the next Congress. We need to put every lawmaker on notice now, reminding them that workers’ retirement security comes before Wall Street’s greed. Tell your elected officials to vote NO on H.R. 1013 and oppose all attempts to weaken retirement protections. SIGN & SEND A retirement account holds the money someone has set aside paycheck after paycheck, often through years of tight budgets and competing bills. Every dollar was earned by people’s hard work and put aside in hopes of securing a stable financial future. Workers expect Congress to protect those funds, not to weaken the rules governing them, leaving workers’s savings at the mercy of unregistered Wall Street brokers. Registration and the protections that accompany it help provide transparency, oversight, and accountability. Expanding access to workers’ retirements without those safeguards enables financial firms to sell risky products with impunity. Teachers, nurses, and nonprofit workers deserve enforceable protections when someone is trying to sell them an investment that could determine whether they can retire with dignity. Wall Street is counting on lawmakers to dress up deregulation as “retirement fairness” and push it through Congress before the year ends. We can make that vote politically costly by demanding that members of both parties publicly stand with the workers whose savings are on the line. Send your letter now demanding that Congress reject H.R. 1013 and stop any effort to fast-track these retirement rollbacks. Thank you for fighting to protect working people’s retirement security. -Ericka Ericka Taylor (she/her) Co-Executive Director Americans for Financial Reform Support the campaign

Americans for Financial Reform