Bingaman (and Heritage Foundation!!) Team up for Nanny-State Retirement Planning

There has been a fair amount of discussion recently about NM Senator Bingaman’s mandatory IRA proposal in Congress. If passed, this legislation would place yet another burden on businesses that would have to take their employees’ money and set up the retirement programs. I will be the first to admit that the Rio Grande Foundation does not offer such programs because they are expensive and costly to manage for a small organization. Instead, I take advantage of Roth IRAs.

As Rob Nikolewski with Capitol Report notes, Bingaman’s plan was developed with the help of the Heritage Foundation, an organization that we usually see eye-to-eye with, but not this time. My view is that if Congress wants to mandate that we save for retirement, they need to transform Social Security into a sustainable, ownership-based program rather than a Ponzi Scheme that is destined to go broke and disappoint those (at least of my generation) who expect to rely on it in their old age.