In a narrow vote, 50 (yes) to 49 (no), the Senate by resolution killed an Obama-era rule that greenlighted state-sponsored auto-IRA retirement programs for small business workers. A majority vote was needed to repeal the rule. The AARP cried foul and urged a “no” (don’t repeal the rule) vote because: “Too many small business employees don’t have a way to save for retirement out of their regular paycheck.” That’s 55 million workers.

“This is an industry effort to try to preserve that customer base for itself even though they’ve had no interest in that customer base for years. Putting sand in the wheels of these state efforts is a destructive thing to do,” says Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. The message: you’re on your own for retirement if you don’t have a workplace retirement plan.

Basically the Department of Labor rule, issued last August, “blessed” these state-sponsored plans. It gave the states a rule that they could rely on to automatically enroll individuals into an Individual Retirement Account and not be subject to federal ERISA rules.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign off on the resolution (Resolution 66), adding to his deregulatory agenda. He already signed off on an earlier vote (Resolution 67) in March that killed Obama-era proposed rules issued in December that would have opened the way for cities and localities to offer similar retirement programs. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, for example, had proposed a “New York City Nest Egg” retirement plan which would have been geared towards the 1.5 million private-sector city workers who don’t have access to plans at work. It had auto-IRAs but also included a municipally-backed retirement plan option. Now that plan has been shelved.

Full Content: Forbes

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