Free Republic

January 30, 2014 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – Proposed legislation from Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) would expand access to privately run, portable retirement plans for all workers. Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, began scouting the idea of an auto-enrolled plan for all workers in 2012 to address the country’s growing retirement crisis "The plan would be shaped as a lifetime stream of income,” Harkin said in a press conference. Unlike 401(k) plans, there would be no lump sums and no borrowing. The assets would be annuitized at retirement age.

You didn't think the US could at first slowly, and then all of a sudden, expropriate retirement accounts and invest them in the "no risk, guaranteed return" MyRA Ponzi scheme introduced by Obama during the State of the Union address without lots of behavior-modifying indoctrination in the "friendly press" first now did you? Sure enough, here is the first major propaganda salvo, coming from none other than the US Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, which will be published tomorrow across the McClatchy media empire. * * * Just out from the US Treasury Department, "In an op-ed to be published in...

".......... After the tour and speech, he signed an executive order directing Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew to establish the savings bonds. Named and modeled after existing Individual Retirement Accounts or IRAs, the bonds offer tax benefits that regular savings accounts do not, don't lose value and can be withdrawn tax-free any time. “It's safe. These balances will never go down in value,” Obama said. Lew, whose agency will set up the bonds, accompanied the president, whose directive is one in a series of executive orders Obama said he's using to circumvent a divided Congress that's on pace to be the...

President Obama on Tuesday offered up a new kind of "starter" retirement accounts aimed at employees of companies that don't offer such plans. Obama is calling them the "MyRA" and said he would, by executive order, direct the Treasury Department to create them. Details were scarce Tuesday night, but employees will be able to contribute part of their wages to the savings accounts, which would be backed by the U.S. government.

WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The Obama administration is scheduled on Wednesday to launch a retirement savings vehicle called "myRA," aimed at enrolling more Americans in a government-backed investment option. In details provided by the White House on Wednesday, the retirement savings proposal would be similar to a Roth Individual Retirement Account, but with holdings backed by the U.S. government like savings bonds. "MyRA guarantees a decent return with no risk of losing what you put in," President Barack Obama said in introducing the program on Tuesday night in his State of the Union Speech.

Earlier today we hinted at what was coming in "Obama To Unveil Treasury IRAs." Well, here it is, and it even has a catchy name. Presenting: the MyRA, and since it offers "guaranteed return and no risk" we now know where all the Fed's bond trades will go to work once QE ends. From the president: Let’s do more to help Americans save for retirement. Today, most workers don’t have a pension. A Social Security check often isn’t enough on its own. And while the stock market has doubled over the last five years, that doesn’t help folks who don’t...

Cancer-stricken Sen. Tom Coburn revealed Tuesday that his health insurance under Obamacare doesn’t cover his oncologist, but said he still is receiving excellent care. “I’m doing well from a health standpoint, got great docs,” Coburn said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday when asked about his health. “Fortunately — even though my new coverage won’t cover my specialist — I’m going to have great care and I have a great prognosis.” The Oklahoma Republican’s spokesman confirmed to POLITICO that since the senator enrolled in his health insurance plan under Obamacare, his coverage has been reduced and he lost coverage for...

Struggling to generate second-term momentum, President Obama will use Tuesday’s State of the Union address to announce new executive actions on job training and retirement security, while prodding a divided Congress to work harder on expanding economic mobility for middle class Americans

(RNS) Tony Campolo, a progressive evangelical leader who counseled President Bill Clinton through the Monica Lewinsky scandal, announced Tuesday (Jan. 14) that the organization he founded nearly 40 years ago will close on June 30. Campolo, 78, plans to retire with the closure of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education, but he will continue to write and speak, with nearly 200 engagements scheduled for 2014. He said his health is fine and he wants to write one more book on how Christianity fits with the social sciences.

. It might seem fun to move to a new place in retirement that has nice weather, more leisure activities or a significantly lower cost of living. But there are also many drawbacks of moving away from your friends, family and support system. Most people don't relocate in retirement, and those who do tend to move only very short distances. Just 6 percent of those age 60 and older changed residences between 2008 and 2012, and more than half of the people who traded places stayed within the same county, according to Census Bureau data. Here's why you may not...

Congress is more unpopular than ever, but some Members are better than its reputation. One of them is Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who announced on Friday that he'll leave the Senate at the end of this year. Mr. Coburn's second term doesn't officially end until 2016, but he is battling a recurrence of prostate cancer and said he felt he could "best serve my own children and grandchildren by shifting my focus elsewhere" than Congress. Mr. Coburn's tenure on Capitol Hill has been notable for his convictions on behalf of limited government combined with a determination to do more...

what is viewed as a rush to the exits in the face of the Obamacare disaster and the Obama scandal machine bleeding into the 2014 mid-term elections, three prominent democrats in the U.S. Congress have announced their retirement this week. On Monday, 40-year Capitol Hill veteran and Pelosi Democrat, George Miller (D-CA) called it quits. Miller, 68, has been in the House since 1974, the year of Watergate. Miller stated that he looked “forward to one last year in Congress, fighting the good fight and then working in new venues on the issues that have inspired me.” Miller also indicated...

Here's a new twist on an old New Year's Resolution: If you want to give yourself the security of financial independence, try budgeting the way many wealth accumulators do. The secret? They don't budget. Your first reaction might be, "Of course these people don't budget! They have so much money that they don't need to." That may be true for some of those who have money today, but I'm referring to people who want to remain wealthy or those who are "wealth accumulators." These are people who don't start out with money, but who build up significant wealth over time....

Pennsylvania Rep. Jim Gerlach, one of a shrinking number of Republican moderates in the U.S. House, said Monday he will retire from Congress at the end of this term. Gerlach said it's "simply time for me to move on to new challenges and to spend more time with my wife and family." The six-term congressman's decision opens up a district anchored in Philadelphia's western suburbs and rural areas on either side of Reading, as well as a coveted seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee. Gerlach has routinely had relatively close elections, though the latest round of redistricting made...

WASHINGTON – Experts told a Senate panel Congress should expand Social Security for the poor and encourage middle- and upper-income individuals to ramp up private savings to improve their retirement prospects. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Patrick Toomey (R-Pa.) recently held the first of a series of hearings focused on how to enhance retirement security for Americans. From 1979 to 2011, the number of private workers with retirement plans covered by defined benefit pension plans fell from 62 percent to 7 percent. At the same time, the percentage participating in defined contribution plans increased from 16 percent to 66 percent....

(AP) Retirement unlikely for some blue-collar Americans By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS Associated Press Tom Edwards grew up in a family that's been cutting trees and hauling timber in the Pacific Northwest for more than a century. The Spanaway, Wash., resident says he has worked as a logger since he was a kid _ it's just what an able-bodied youngster was expected to do.

This is how you take your lumps in the Obama administration. Botch the roll-out of the president’s legacy law so badly that you end up with three million fewer insured people than when we started, and you get to retire, announce it over a holiday weekend, and grab that juicy pension for 41 years of mediocre-to-disastrous public service. The person tasked with overseeing the development of HealthCare.gov is retiring, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Monday.The departure of Michelle Snyder, the chief operating officer at CMS who’s been in public service for 41 years, comes...

A global retirement crisis is bearing down on workers of all ages. How retirement systems vary, country to country Associated Press Spawned years before the Great Recession and the financial meltdown in 2008, the crisis was significantly worsened by those twin traumas. It will play out for decades, and its consequences will be far-reaching. Many people will be forced to work well past the traditional retirement age of 65 — to 70 or even longer. Living standards will fall, and poverty rates will rise for the elderly in wealthy countries that built safety nets for seniors after World War II.

While the Obama Administration is still pumping resources and taxpayer money into the implementation of Obamacare, the initial disbursement of pork included in the bill was successfully doled out almost a full two years ago. And the main recipient of taxpayer largess was, once again, the UAW. The Obamacare pork came in the form of a program called the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program or ERRP. $5 billion of taxpayer money was allocated to help pay for healthcare costs to retirees between the age of 55 and 65 . Number one on the union-dominated list of recipients was the UAW, which...

In 24 years of active military service, I never lived any closer than 300 miles to my family. Sometimes it was eight time zones away. My wife and I moved five times in first ten years. All five children were born at different duty stations; the first one was born overseas. It was two months before the grandparents saw him. I’ve been deployed three times to hostile fire zones. I’ve been shot at, had grenades throw at me, had a pistol put to my head, seen a SCUD missile blow up overhead and it’s wreckage land a quarter-mile away, and...