Be Our Guest: Kathleen Kennedy Townsend – On Retirement Security and Three Critical Policy Goals
The Honorable Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
We recently had a chance to join the Honorable Ms. Townsend at some important, innovation-oriented meetings in Washington DC, including the Georgetown Center for Retirement Initiatives’ gathering of states, and NAST. We gave a light reference to our conversations here, but didn’t have a chance to capture the full essence of the ideas she shared.
Townsend shared some of the priorities of Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. As retirement nerds, these really resonate with us and we wanted to bring them to you here. In her own words:
Colleagues, both the President and the Secretary want to help businesses encourage their workers to save. They want us to live in a country that supports lifetime income — first through a strengthened Social Security System, and second through a robust system of workers’ savings. The Secretary has asked me to lead a Retirement Campaign. I think about that campaign in two parts.
The first is to engage more people into our efforts. It’s hard to organize a movement when the very word “Retirement” puts people in a fetal position. But we’ve done it elsewhere. Traffic safety is one example. We don’t just blame the drivers when there are car crashes. We’ve improved the safety of cars, and roads, and we passed laws about drinking and driving. Just as we changed how we thought about traffic safety, we must change how we think about retirement security. The system must change. It is up to us to figure out how to build better savings vehicles and improved roads to financial security.
The second is to focus on three critical policy goals:
Make it EASY TO SAVE, by encouraging all employers to offer auto enrollment and auto escalation in their retirement benefits.
Make it EASY to take your savings from job to job. One advantage of state Auto IRAs is that people in the state program are keeping their savings in place and growing them as they move from job to job.
Make it EASY to convert a lump sum payment into monthly retirement income.
States are already leaders in developing new and better ways for people to build retirement savings. Congress is considering legislation that would further expand lifetime income options. We also see proposals that would improve retirement savings portability – and I encourage states to take a close look at what they can do together.
I would also like to enlist more social justice groups as part of this effort. I’m thinking about advocates for the caring economy, for women, for a higher minimum wage, for paid sick leave. All these groups know that they are helping families enjoy a greater sense of security. It is up to us to show that good retirement policies help families. That is easier to do if groups know we are talking system reform, not personal weakness.
I am sure that there are many more innovative ideas. That is the value of current innovation. You can explore. See what works. Figure out what doesn’t. Change course. Talk with each other.
Secretary Walsh wants you to know that we are here to help.
Well done! / Kathleen
The Honorable Kathleen Kennedy Townsend serves as Labor Secretary Marty Walsh’s Representative on Retirement and Pension Issues. Townsend most recently served as Executive Director of Retirement for All, a grassroots advocacy foundation to create universal access to retirement savings at work. From 2018 to 2019, she was Director of Retirement Security at the Economic Policy Institute, and she has served as a research professor at Georgetown University, where she founded the Center for Retirement Initiatives.
Townsend also served as chair of the Governor’s Retirement Security Task Force for the State of Maryland; this Task Force spearheaded efforts to enact a state Auto IRA program for uncovered workers. She was also Maryland’s first woman lieutenant governor, from 1995 to 2003. Prior to being elected lieutenant governor, Townsend served as a U.S. deputy assistant attorney general. She has also been a Managing Director at the Rock Creek Group, a Washington, DC-based investment advisor. Townsend is the eldest child of Robert F. Kennedy and a friend of Retirement Security Matters. We appreciate her perspectives!
This piece was featured in the April 21, 2022, edition of Retirement Security Matters. For more fresh thinking on retirement savings innovation, check out the newsletter here.
