It is long past time for D.C. lawmakers to stop making the perfect the enemy of the good.
Republican senators are threatening to do it again, putting at risk a good bill to improve retirement savings options for most Americans.
Amazingly, in this age of vitriolic partisan warfare on just about every issue, the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act, or SECURE Act, passed the House with a bipartisan 417-3 hyper-super-duper-majority. Key Republican senators, though, are insisting on adding provisions unwanted by House Democrats, meaning the bill would need to return to the House and to an uncertain future. The far better option would be for the Senate to pass the House version as is, chalk up the win for American taxpayers and retirees, and then try to handle the disputed provisions in a separate bill.
The House bill features a cornucopia of provisions that could help seniors get more bang for their retirement bucks. Several would give seniors greater flexibility to keep contributing to 401(k) plans, or to delay taking withdrawals from them, if they want to keep working longer and building bigger nest eggs before retirement. Other provisions would encourage such plans to offer the steady-income programs known as annuities, let companies enroll long-term part-time workers in their 401(k) plans, and let smaller companies band together to offer plans they otherwise could not individually afford.
There are almost no downsides to these proposals. They all expand opportunities for saving or for making better use of money already saved. The near-universal House approval for the bill indicates that the usual hurdles of ideology and partisan advantage aren’t at play here. With the public clamoring for some sign that Congress can actually get things done efficiently and without rancor, rather than dithering around or engaging in the equivalent of fraternity food fights, this bill is a perfect chance for legislators to deliver.
But never put it past lawmakers to blow a perfect chance.
The main sticking points seem not to be senators’ objections to provisions already in the House bill, but instead with their desire to add even more new provisions. The highest profile change would be a proposal by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to allow people to use tax-advantaged education savings accounts to pay for home-schooling expenses. It’s a good idea, but House Democrats oppose it, and that would endanger passage of the entire bill.
If the home-schooling provision is such a good idea, and it probably is, let it stand on its own. Force a vote, take it to the public, let the public clamor arise, and try to convince enough Democrats to join Republicans in voting for it that it commands a majority. If that fails, go out and campaign and raise money. Help your party retake the House so that it can pass next time.
Again and again, especially on big bills with lots of moving parts, members of Congress who give “all-or-nothing” ultimatums end up getting nothing. That’s what happened, for example, when Republicans tried to repeal and replace Obamacare: Members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus balked at a decent, passable bill, killing it dead in its tracks, because it wasn’t perfect. By the time the effort was revived by policy innovator Gary Palmer, R-Ala., momentum for repeal and replace had been irretrievably lost.
And that’s just one example of literally hundreds of good bills that have failed in the past 20 years because lawmakers insisted on ideological perfection.
Sometimes a win is a win is a win. Take the win, senators. Pass the SECURE Act, while the odds of passage are still secure.
