President Joe Biden is coming for your nest egg. For real: A new Biden Labor Department rule aims to steer the retirement funds of 152 million Americans toward companies with woke policies on climate change and other “environmental, social and governance” goals.
Cross your fingers that state attorneys general, if not Congress, can stop him.
Under the Biden rule, fund managers would no longer be limited to investing workers’ assets “solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries,” as the law has long required. Instead, they could also “consider climate change and other environmental, social and governance factors when they select investments and exercise shareholder rights” — by implication, even if it doesn’t maximize returns for workers.
Climate-change and social-justice warriors began pushing companies to adopt ESG practices, and for large shareholders to invest in them, back in the Obama era. But President Donald Trump banned retirement-fund managers from using worker cash for such political purposes. The new Biden rule would override that.
At a time “when Americans’ 401(k)s have already taken such a hit due to market downturns and record high inflation, the last thing we should do is encourage fiduciaries to make decisions with a lower rate of return for purely ideological reasons,” warns Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who’s pushing a resolution to block the rule.
It’s “irresponsible of the Biden administration to jeopardize retirement savings for more than 150 million Americans for purely political purposes,” fumes Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
Trouble is, Manchin is so far the only Democratic senator to join the bill’s 49 Republican backers — so it may well fall short of a 51-vote majority needed to pass.
That leaves a group of 25 GOP state attorneys general who’ve sued to keep the change from taking effect. Their suit says the rule “contravenes” the law’s “clear command that fiduciaries act with the sole motive of promoting the financial interests of plan participants and their beneficiaries.”
The AGs are dead right. If woke individuals want to invest their own money for political purposes rather than try to maximize returns, that’s their business. But Biden has no right to do it with your money. He needs to be stopped.
