Sponsor
James P. McGovern
Representative · D-MA
Representative · D-MA
Official title: To advance responsible policies.
Introduced January 3, 2025 by James P. McGovern · Last progress January 3, 2025
The bill expands retirement access, veteran supports, and targeted security/supply‑chain measures that could materially improve savings, job and security outcomes for many Americans, but does so while imposing significant administrative costs, fiscal impacts, and some privacy, fraud, and implementation risks that Congress and agencies will need to manage.
Millions of private‑sector workers (including part‑time employees and those with student loan debt) will be automatically enrolled and escalated into workplace retirement plans, with higher default savings rates, expanded employer tax credits, student‑loan matching, and later RMD ages — increasing retirement saving and access.
Plan participants and sponsors gain stronger administrative protections and recovery tools — searchable 'Lost and Found' to locate abandoned accounts, higher thresholds to avoid forced small payouts, expanded EPCRS/self‑correction safe harbors, and limits on recouping overpayments — reducing leakage and easing fixes for errors.
Veterans, servicemembers, TAP participants, and their spouses get centralized apprenticeship listings (searchable by occupation/location) plus expanded entrepreneurship training and SBA outreach, improving job and small‑business starts for military‑connected people.
Employers, plan administrators, and agencies face substantial new compliance, system‑change, and administrative costs to implement automatic enrollment/escalation, new eligibility rules, tax credits, corrections processes, website updates, and related regulatory complexity.
Automatic deferrals will reduce take‑home pay for some low‑income workers who do not opt out, creating possible short‑term cash‑flow hardship for vulnerable households.
Expanded tax credits, new employer credits, and program authorizations will lower federal revenues or increase budgetary costs, creating fiscal pressure or tradeoffs for other spending priorities.
Based on analysis of 20 sections of legislative text.
Requires automatic enrollment/escalation in most 401(k)/403(b) plans, adds retirement safe harbors, veteran apprenticeship listings, criminal penalties for school‑zone trafficking, and multiple studies and program authorizations.
Makes multiple statutory changes across retirement, employment, homeland security, criminal law, maritime review, small-business training, and cultural planning. Major provisions require automatic enrollment and safe-harbor correction rules for employer retirement plans, expand special retirement treatment for certain injured federal employees, create veteran-focused apprenticeship information online, add a domestic-abuse retirement distribution rule, tighten penalties for sex‑trafficking in school zones, authorize an SBA boots-to-business training program, and set up studies and reporting for DHS equipment waivers, foreign ownership of port terminals, a SelectUSA semiconductor FDI effort, and a commission to study a National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture.