Despite some earlier momentum, House Education and Labor Chairman George Miller on Thursday proclaimed a bill to increase disclosure of retirement-account fees dead for the year.
"We're not going to move it," Miller said. "We don't see the president signing it. And with the amount of time left, it's just too difficult to get anything through the Senate anyway."
The House Ways and Means Committee has a jurisdictional claim on the legislation, Miller said, adding that he has not been able to work out differences with that panel.
Miller's comments came a little more than a week after he hosted a joint workshop with Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel for House staff about the importance of moving a bill to improve reporting of fees charged by financial services providers on 401(k)-style retirement plans.
On a party-line vote, the Education and Labor panel approved a bill in April, opposed by mutual fund companies, to require firms to provide estimates of total fees and expenses to be paid under service contracts with plan administrators.
It would also require 401(k) plans to offer at least one low-cost index fund option.
The Ways and Means Committee asserted its jurisdiction over the matter because it has oversight of the tax code, through which 401(k)-style plans are administered.
Ways and Means Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., introduced a measure last year that would drop the index fund requirement, but apply to other types of retirement plans as well, including 403(b) and governmental 457(b) plans.
Rangel has been trying to determine the best approach to the issue, but there still appears to be no unanimity on the panel.
"My bill is in the thick of things," Neal said, although Ways and Means Income Security Subcommittee Chairman Jim McDermott, D-Wash., appears to have injected himself into the debate.
McDermott considered introducing his own bill, but he has been pushing an extension of unemployment insurance benefits and other issues, and he first wants to see if he can merge his ideas with those of Neal and others.
A Ways and Means aide said the panel probably won't get a unified product ready this year, but that staff is working toward resolving the matter in the next Congress.
This article appeared in the Saturday, June 14, 2008 edition of National Journal Daily.
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