Friday, March 29th, 2024 Church Directory

Protecting Investments

(Editor’s Note: The following column was submitted by Congressman Tom Emmer.)

We are midway through a two-week voting period in Washington, D.C., and as the 118th Congress begins to pick up steam, House Republicans are making good on our Commitment to America.

The American people elected a Republican House Majority to undo the damage done by Joe Biden’s presidency, and that is exactly what we are doing. It is a well-known secret in Washington that when Democrats don’t have the votes in Congress to pass their unpopular policies, they turn to their bureaucrat friends to implement them. One of the more recent examples of this behavior was the Department of Labor’s rule allowing retirement plan fiduciaries to consider climate change and other environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors when they select retirement investments and exercise shareholder rights.

This rule flies in the face of The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) which governs most employee-based retirement and health plans in the private sector. Under ERISA, a retirement plan manager must make investment decisions based only on the financial factors that produce the least risk and greatest financial return to workers and retirees. The Labor Department’s rule would allow fund managers to consider ESG factors like climate change and gender policies without shareholder approval when making investment decisions with Americans’ retirement funds.

Thankfully, earlier this week House Republicans passed a resolution to overturn this thinly veiled attempt to force their far-left ideology on the American people. This resolution passed the House of Representatives and the Senate with bipartisan support and is now on its way to President Biden’s desk. Unfortunately, President Biden has vowed to veto this commonsense resolution in favor of protecting his woke agenda as opposed to the retirement savings of more than 150 million Americans.

Simply put, fund managers should not be able to make woke decisions with Americans’ retirement funds without the consent of the shareholders. House Republicans will continue to stand in the breach and defend your retirement savings from the predations of Democrats’ woke policy agenda.