EXCLUSIVE: Sens. Bill Cassidy, Jim Banks roll out legislation to repeal Biden-era ESG mandates for fiduciaries
The two HELP Committees lawmakers are rolling out legislation that would repeal a lot of Biden-era ESG rules for fiduciaries.
Sens. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) and Jim Banks (R., Ind.) want fiduciaries to prioritize profits over left-wing ideology, just like they used to, according to new pieces of legislation obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter.
The two lawmakers, who both serve on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, want fiduciaries to prioritize “what is best for the workers’ hard-earned savings,” as Cassidy explained.
Cassidy, for his part, is introducing the Restoring Integrity in Fiduciary Duty Act, a piece of legislation that protects American workers’ retirements from progressive activists by reinforcing the boundaries of which fiduciaries may act within.
Prior to President Joe Biden’s tenure in the White House, these sorts of measures were commonplace. However, Biden repealed measures put in place during the first Trump administration that protected retirees’ accounts from untested investment strategies favored by many in the ESG world.
Under Cassidy’s legislation, fiduciaries would only be able to consider the financial factors of an investment and make random choices when two investment options are identical, rather than prioritizing unproven ESG metrics. Cassidy’s bill also reaffirms that ERISA’s fiduciary duties of prudence and loyalty include the exercise of shareholder rights and proxy voting.
For years, Cassidy has warned about ESG rules, even attempting to overturn Biden-era rules via a Congressional Review Act (CRA) push; Cassidy recently helped lead the efforts to support the Trump administration’s plan to repeal what Cassidy has called the “reckless” Biden ESG rule.
Joining Cassidy in the ESG pushback is Banks, who is leading the Providing Complete Information to Retirement Investors Act in conjunction with Cassidy’s legislation.
Banks’s bill requires employer-sponsored defined contribution plans to explain to participants the difference between choosing investments selected by ERISA fiduciaries and those self-selected through a brokerage window.
The Providing Complete Information to Retirement Investors Act also requires ERISA plans to provide a notice to investors each time they allocate money into or out of a brokerage window that such investments were not selected by a fiduciary and may result in lower returns.
“Americans work hard for their retirement, and their money should be working for them, not to fund the Left’s woke agenda,” Banks explained. “This bill makes sure retirees know exactly where their savings are going so they can invest with confidence and common sense.”
Cassidy, for his part, explained that the legislation that he and Banks are rolling out are “pro-worker, pro-family bills protect millions of Americans’ retirement savings from political ideology.”