A wide-ranging coalition of conservative groups has called on Congress to “exercise its power of the purse granted by the Constitution to halt the Obama administration's executive overreach.”
Invoking the terminology “Obamacare for your IRA” to describe the proposal, the group, which includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, and the Log Cabin Republicans, claims in a letter that, under the fiduciary rule, “the DOL claims authority never granted by Congress to greatly restrict investment choices for 401(k)s, individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and other saving vehicles.”
The letter, addressed to House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, notes that 96 House Democrats recently wrote the DOL expressing concern that the fiduciary rule could limit access to retirement planning for poor and middle-class Americans, and that “center-left economists from the Brookings Institution and Progressive Policy Institute have concluded that the rule would cause many Americans to lose their current brokers and could cost savers $80 billion over the next decade.” They claim that the rule would make it much more difficult for individuals to open and maintain an IRA, and for companies to offer 401(k)s — restrictions that they maintain “amount to a higher tax burden on Americans by making it harder for the vehicles for retirement saving designed by Congress to lower that burden.
“IRA holders could also lose their ability to invest in gold, real estate and other nontraditional assets if DOL bureaucrats deem these choices to be not in their best interests,” the letter notes.
