Op-Ed: Jason Rapert: Congress should stop shortchanging America’s teachers and nurses

Finally, after years of gridlock, Washington has shown it can act on the bread-and-butter financial questions that affect ordinary Americans’ lives.

Last summer, the landmark One Big Beautiful Bill Act created Trump Accounts, which have already enrolled 7 million American children in tax-advantaged investment accounts, with eligible newborns receiving a $1,000 federal seed contribution to jump-start their financial futures. This spring, President Trump signed Executive Order 14403, directing the creation of TrumpIRA.gov, a federal platform connecting workers without employer-sponsored plans to low-cost, high-quality IRAs complete with up to $1,000 in annual federal matching funds. These are genuine wins for working Americans and a sign that Washington can still deliver on kitchen-table priorities.

But the work isn’t finished. This Thursday, the Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing titled “Empowering Main Street by Unlocking Access to Capital.” It is a fitting title for the moment, because the next piece of unfinished retirement business is exactly that: unlocking access for the workers who have been locked out.

Having served as a licensed financial advisor with 28 years of experience in the insurance and financial services industry, in addition to serving 12 years in the Arkansas State Senate, I sat across the table from the kinds of workers this bill is designed to help: teachers, nurses, and church staff who had saved faithfully and still faced a retirement landscape tilted against them. Now, as president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, I represent elected officials across all 50 states who serve those same communities. When policy quietly shortchanges the people who answer a higher calling, I take personal and professional interest.

Under current law, 14.5 million workers saving through 403(b) plans, the retirement vehicle used by nonprofits, churches, and public schools, cannot access Collective Investment Trusts (CITs). Like mutual funds, CITs allow investors to pool their funds to buy stocks and bonds. But because CITs operate under banking regulation rather than securities law, they have substantially lower compliance overhead, and that cost difference flows directly to savers in the form of lower fees.

Independent analysis has found that comparable mutual funds cost more than twice as much as CITs on average, across both actively and passively managed strategies. Compounded over a full career, that difference can cost a nonprofit worker earning a median salary more than $23,000 in forgone retirement savings by age 65, all because of a regulatory technicality. For workers who already earn less than their private-sector counterparts and are more likely to retire with inadequate savings, that is not an abstraction. It is the difference between dignity in retirement and financial precarity.

For corporate workers enrolled in 401(k) plans, CITs are a mainstream retirement tool. CITs now hold more target-date fund assets than mutual funds do, and investment managers launching new target-date series have overwhelmingly chosen the CIT structure. 403(b) savers cannot follow, and not because CITs are riskier or less regulated. It is because securities law has never been updated to accommodate them.

Senator Katie Britt of Alabama has led the charge on exactly that fix. Her Retirement Fairness for Charities and Educational Institutions Act would give 403(b) participants access to CITs, completing work Congress left half-finished in the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, which amended the tax code but omitted the necessary securities law change. Senator Britt’s legislation, alongside the INVEST Act, which passed the House in December by a 302-123 bipartisan margin, closes that gap for good.

Congress is best positioned to provide the permanent fix through legislation. But the Securities and Exchange Commission also has existing exemptive authority under securities law that it could exercise now to permit 403(b) plans to invest in CITs. Regulators have used similar authority before to modernize investment rules when Congress moved slowly, and that option remains available if legislative action stalls.

There is no sound policy rationale for maintaining a two-tiered retirement system that consistently delivers worse outcomes for the workers who teach our children, care for our sick, and serve our communities. Congress should finish the job. If it does not, the SEC should step in.

Nearly half of Americans say they don’t expect to be financially prepared for retirement when the time comes. Against that backdrop, Washington has a rare opportunity to enact a bipartisan, broadly supported, long-overdue reform that would expand retirement security for millions of workers who have spent their careers serving others.

This week, as the Senate Banking Committee gavels in Thursday’s hearing on unlocking access to capital, the Senate has a real chance to show those workers that Washington is listening. All it has to do is act.

Jason Rapert is the President of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, past president of the National Council of Insurance Legislators in 2018, and previously served in the Arkansas State Senate from 2011 – 2023