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The Trump administration is exploring its options to create a retirement savings plan for workers who don’t have an employer-provided one without going through Congress, people familiar with the talks told Semafor.
President Donald Trump is considering mentioning the concept in his State of the Union address, the people said; that mention would come as officials center their affordability pitch on the kids’ savings plan known as Trump Accounts.
It would also follow an order Trump signed last year on retirement savings plans. One option: resurrecting former President Barack Obama’s MyRA program, which Trump shuttered in 2017, citing high costs. Obama announced that plan, which eventually drew 30,000 participants, during his 2014 State of the Union.
Officials could integrate a new iteration with the so-called Saver’s Match, the federal government’s matching contribution to certain retirement savings plans beginning in 2027.
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National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett has long advocated for a similar concept. During the Biden administration, he pressed lawmakers to advance legislation that would recreate the government’s Thrift Savings Plan for private-sector workers without employer-provided retirement plans.
Sens. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., plus Reps. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., and Terri Sewell, D-Ala., reintroduced that proposal last year.
“Government should make the proven TSP model available to a wide range of working Americans, especially those below a certain income level,” Hassett wrote alongside economist Teresa Ghilarducci in a 2021 editorial in The Washington Post.
Alex von Fürstenberg, the son of fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg, said last year he was pitching the Trump administration on the same idea as “basically [a] philanthropy project” (and filming a documentary about the efforts, slated for release this year).
Lobbying disclosures reveal he’s recently tapped firms like Miller Strategies and Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck to work on retirement-related issues.
Trump praised Australia’s retirement savings plan, known as superannuation, at a press conference on Trump Accounts in December. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also made positive comments about it last year.