Conservative Groups Call for Defunding Fiduciary Rule

Thirty-four mostly conservative groups signed a letter Thursday to House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell asking the lawmakers to kill the fiduciary-only rule.

The Department of Labor overstepped its bounds in creating the “destructive fiduciary rule,” which will “greatly restrict investment choices for 401(k)s, individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and other saving vehicles.

The letter is signed by leaders of prominent right-leaning groups such as Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform; Jenny Beth Martin, CEO and co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots; and Americans for Prosperity, a political action group funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David H. Koch.

It asks Boehner and McConnell to “freeze funding in any spending bill for the Department of Labor's (DOL) proposed fiduciary rule until the DOL withdraws such rule.”

The DOL is busy reading through the more than 391,000 comments it has received since an August public hearing was following by an addition two-week comment period, Assistant Secretary of Labor Phyllis Borzi said this week. DOL officials say there will be changes to the rule before it is released early next year.

Some from the financial services industry has been joined mainly by Republicans in fighting the rule, which would require anyone dealing with retirement savings to act as a fiduciary. Authors of the new letter stressed “bipartisan” opposition, citing a letter sent by 96 House Democrats asking the DOL to fix the rule.

“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,” the letter states.

In June, separate House and Senate committees vogted along party lines to defund the DOL fiduciary rule. Those measures are part of the long, complicated budget process that continues to vex both sides.

InsuranceNewsNet Senior Editor John Hilton has covered business and other beats in more than 20 years of daily journalism. John may be reached at [email protected].