New retirement savings plans: Senior Democratic lawmaker

From Reuters.com

The United States may need to create another kind of retirement security program now that trillions of dollars have evaporated from workers' retirement savings, a senior Democratic lawmaker said on Tuesday.

For too many Americans, the 401(k) plans that dominate U.S. private-sector retirement savings "have become little more than a high-stakes crap shoot," said Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

"If you didn't take your retirement savings out of the market before the (stock market) crash, you are likely to take years to recoup your losses, if at all," the California Democrat said. The 401(k) plans are tax-advantaged savings plans named after a provision of the U.S. tax code.

In the short term, the United States should preserve and strengthen 401(k) plans and root out hidden fees that are eating up much of workers' savings, Miller told a hearing on retirement security.

"But we must also ask the difficult questions about the state of our nation's retirement system as a whole and look to see whether we need to create a new leg of retirement security," Miller said.