Kent Mason Quoted in Pensions & Investments Article on President Trump’s Federal Retirement Account Announcement
- Published Date: February 27, 2026
Davis & Harman Partner, Kent Mason, was recently featured in a Pensions & Investments article titled, “Why the Retirement Industry is Cautiously Optimistic About Trump’s Federal Retirement Account Plan,” where he discussed President Trump’s State of the Union address and legislative proposals to provide a federal retirement savings program.
In the article, Pensions & Investments reported on President Trump’s February 24th State of the Union address where he announced that his Administration is developing a plan to provide access to a federal retirement savings program, similar to the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), for individuals that are not covered by an employer-sponsored retirement plan. Following the speech, industry experts hypothesized how such a program could be established, and how the program would interact with the SECURE 2.0 Act’s Saver’s Match provision.
Mason is quoted saying, “[w]hat [President Trump] is doing is he’s leveraging current law. . . The Saver’s Match exists. What he’s doing is saying, ‘Look at the people out there who are not eligible for a plan, and they haven’t taken the action to start contributing to an IRA. They’re missing out on this Saver’s Match. So, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to establish and promote very easy, low-cost IRAs, sponsored by the government.’” The program would likely operate similarly to the now-shuttered myRA program, which was a government-backed IRA program aimed at providing coverage for low- and middle-income workers without access to a retirement plan.
The article further discusses legislative proposals, such as the Retirement Savings for Americans Act, introduced in both the House and the Senate that would establish a TSP-for-all program with automatic plan features and federal matching contributions. In the article, Mason stated that the legislation is unlikely to advance in Congress due to policy concerns with the bill’s current draft that disincentivizes employers who currently offer a retirement savings plan to their employees, as those employers would miss out on a large government subsidy in the form of retirement contributions paid on behalf of the employer’s employees.
Mason is quoted stating, “[s]o the bill would discourage plan sponsorship and might require states to repeal their auto IRA programs. . . [t]hese are just some prominent examples of why the TSP for all bill does not have a future without massive modifications.”
A link to the full article can be found here.
