D.C. Pension Geeks
Welcome to DC Pension Geeks, a conversation with top retirement-related policymakers and regulators in and around Washington. Hosted by Brian Graff, an attorney, accountant, former Capitol Hill staffer, and now CEO of the American Retirement Association, it’s an inside view of the ups and downs, ins and outs and sometimes surprising turns Washington takes on the road to ensuring a secure retirement for millions of hard-working Americans.
D.C. Pension Geeks
Brad Campbell - The Trump Administration’s Priorities for Retirement Plans
“There’s a little bit going on here in [Washington] D.C.,” American Retirement Association CEO Brian Graff quipped at the outset of the latest episode of D.C. Pension Geeks. “We have a great guest to help us figure out what’s going on.”
Indeed. Brad Campbell, former Assistant Labor Secretary for the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) and currently a Partner with legal powerhouse Faegre Drinker, joined Graff for a frank discussion of what’s ahead for retirement plans in the second Trump Administration, and where we are withy the fiduciary rule, ESG, litigation reform, alternative investments, and more.
My point is, though, what the late what Employee Benefits Security Administration might say about investments in private equity. I think we're likely to see a more positive stance, but how big an issue that is, I think, will depend in part on who's sitting in the seat as the EPSA assistant secretary and how much they personally want to work on.
Speaker 2:DC Pension Geeks brings you exclusive conversations with top retirement policymakers and regulators in and around Washington DC, hosted by Brian Graff, an attorney, accountant, former Capitol Hill staffer and CEO of the American Retirement Association. If you're looking for an insider's view of all the twists and turns that Washington takes on the road to ensuring a secure retirement for millions of Americans, you're in the right place. Welcome to DC Pension Geeks.
Speaker 3:All right, everybody, it's 2025, and I'm a little bit behind the eight ball here, so it's time to catch up with some new DC Pension Geeks, podcasts, and there's a little bit going on here inC, and we've got a great guest to help us try to figure out what's going on, what's going to happen with the new Trump administration None other than the Honorable Brad Campbell, the former assistant secretary for the Employee Benefit Security Administration, the administration and Brad has got an incredible resume time working for the Department of Labor. He was also on Capitol Hill as a legislative director has both a background in labor issues, but also did his fair share of tax issues as well. We're very fortunate to have him with us today, so thank you, brad, for joining me today.
Speaker 1:Hey, thank you for the invitation. I mean when the man, the myth, the legend, brian, gives me a call. I got to show up.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, I think my kids would refer to me mostly as myth, but anyway, I think my kids would refer to me mostly as myth, but anyway. So we like, as everyone knows, we like to talk a little bit about you. Know how you became a pension geek, so how did you end up in this wonderful world we call ERISA?
Speaker 1:Well, I think you're right. No one out there grows up wanting to be a pension geek, an ERISA lawyer, a tax lawyer, any of those kinds of things. It's one of those things you just somehow find your way into. In my case, as you say, I was working on Capitol Hill and I'd been doing tax issues, so I was somewhat adjacent to the employee benefit space for then Congressman Chris Cox, later the SEC chair, and I got a job, as you said, being legislative director for a freshman congressman who had come in, ernie Fletcher.
Speaker 1:Dr Ernie Fletcher, who was, though, a freshman, he was a medical doctor, and at that point in Congress in the late 90s, we were involved in the patients' Bill of Rights fights. So it was all about health care reform, particularly the ERISA aspects of health care, particularly the ERISA aspects of health care, and so I really got into ERISA in the first place through the health care door by working with him on that legislation and, effectively, about the time the health care debate was sewn up and ultimately no bill happened, which wasn't a bad outcome for that particular bill. Around that time the Bush administration had just started and Enron happened, and so I kind of went over to the Department of Labor with the Bush administration and because of Enron and really pushing things, even though I went over there originally for more of a health benefits focus.
Speaker 1:I ended up liking and really focusing more on retirement plans. So since roughly 2001, I've been focused more on the retirement plan side of things.
Speaker 3:It's like a bug you get bit and people just don't want to stop doing it. That's a very common story. There's something about this retirement policy. I think you feel like you can actually make a difference and do some good, and that's probably what drives a lot of people behind it.
Speaker 1:Well, I have to say that is something that I, you know, I've had a very non-traditional legal career. I went to a law firm after I left the government. I was never an associate or never went through that traditional law firm career route, and I don't regret that at all. I really enjoyed my time working in public policy. The final job I had in the government the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employee Benefits was the best job I've ever had. I really, as you said, I felt like we were doing something that really mattered. We were trying to solve problems that help people retire and you know, I feel like some really good things. I'm not saying just for me, but from our time there and what had happened with the Pension Protection Act and implementing the regulations for QDIAs, I just feel like we got to be there at a time. I got to be there at a time when important things happened and I really enjoyed being a part of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there was a lot going on during that period of time and I think you know it was.
Speaker 3:That was sort of a period of time, both of us having been doing this for unfortunately way too long. Um, what that I describe as the, as the, as the period of, of generally general harmony, and what I mean by that is people generally saw what we were doing was, you know, good work, wasn't overly controversial. Uh, no, you, Nothing was really making waves. It was more like, hey, we're making some changes to make the system better and, frankly, since the end of that administration, starting with some of the work in the Obama administration, obviously with the first iteration of the fiduciary rule, we've certainly got stuff that's a lot more controversial. I guess to some degree we should be. I don't know, happy is not the right word, but at least we're getting paid attention to now more than we were doing back then. It was hard to get anybody's attention about retirement, certainly way back in the 90s when I first started, but obviously we got to start with that first question, right, you know what's going to happen with the fiduciary rule again.
Speaker 1:Well, we are waiting to see, and I wish I had a better answer than that, but that is. That is the situation. So, as you said, we had the very first version which the Obama administration proposed back in 2010, 2011. And at that time, there was universal agreement. Republicans and Democrats, everybody hated the initial proposal. That's true. Really wasn't any question.
Speaker 2:Capitol.
Speaker 1:Hill hated it, you know, and it was kind of a Department of Labor only initiative at that time. So they went back and retooled it and a couple of years later, due to changes in various personnel throughout the Obama administration, it went from being this DOL idea nobody liked to suddenly being a really important idea at the White House, and so they promoted it and in 2015, they came back with a fiduciary rule that actually made it to the finish line and became a final regulation and really radically, in my view, tried to change the scope of the department's jurisdiction to not just be over ERISA plans you know the plan sponsor agenda but also over the retail side of individual retirement accounts. And I think that's really where the controversy centers on is not the issue of should I be a fiduciary when I tell a plan how to invest? Yeah, I think there's pretty much universal agreement among at least all the major policymakers, not saying the entire world but yeah, yes, fiduciary advice should include people telling plans how to structure their 401ks, et cetera. The question is should that extend to participants who are rolling over to IRAs? Should that extend to the internal management of IRAs? Should that extend to a distribution from an IRA to buy an annuity or something of that nature.
Speaker 1:And that's where there's become a split, where the Obama folks first went down that path of expanding it. That was, of course, litigated. We went to the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit said no to the rule. In between, the first Trump administration came into office and they kind of delayed the rule, but they let it partially go into effect and then the court decision came and the fiduciary rule was dead. That was round two. What I think people forget when they say what's going to happen next? Surely the Biden rule, which we haven't gotten to yet.
Speaker 3:Deja vu. Well, we're deja vu all over again, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're in the same position. The Biden administration came out with a rule and the Trump administration's in a position to decide what happens to it in the courts or in the agency, and I think it's instructive to remember that the first time this happened, in the first Trump administration, the court case was won by the opponents of the fiduciary rule. The Fifth Circuit vacated the Obama-era rule, and so the issue was effectively dead. It was actually and I think people tend to forget this it was actually the Trump administration who resurrected in a different form, 2020 or two.
Speaker 1:Yeah, key parts of the Biden of the Obama era rule as an interpretive guidance in the front of a prohibited transaction exemption and it was a really weird process because the preamble to an exemption contained a bunch of new policy that was unrelated to the text of the exemption but told you how to interpret an original 1975 regulation that was not directly part of the exemption. It was a weird affirmative act by the Trump administration in policy.
Speaker 3:Well, but they needed to say something. I mean because there were questions that had to be answered, and I think they did it in a way that, for the most part, most of the people in the industry thought it worked okay.
Speaker 1:Well, I think there's some room for debate on that. Let's remember that parts of that guidance were immediately challenged in a district court in Florida and in a district court in Texas.
Speaker 3:Not the new 2020-02, the old 2020-02.
Speaker 1:Right, the old 2020-02, which is where the Trump administration sort of resurrected rollover as fiduciary advice of their own motion.
Speaker 3:The Deseret, repealing the Deseret rule.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they repealed the Deseret advisory opinion and then they replaced it with this new guidance, my favorite part of which was later struck down by this Florida district court. But my favorite part of which was where they said if you and a advisor meet, you an individual and an advisor meet and you've only met once, but you intend to meet again in the future to have more advice provided after the rollover. And it meets the regular basis test. I was paying my membership. It's your New Year's resolution.
Speaker 3:My New Year's resolution is to continue giving advice. All right. So if you had to predict, because presumably the Fifth Circuit is going to vacate this rule and certainly there will be no reason not to, because the new administration is not going to defend the rule Um are we? Where are we going?
Speaker 1:Well, so that that, again, is why I think, looking at the last Trump term, last the first Trump term, the first Trump administration, is instructive, because even though that issue was dead, they resurrected parts of it, which indicates at least at that time they had a policy preference for some aspects of expanding not the full scope of expanding fiduciary status to rollover advice, et cetera.
Speaker 1:And so then the Biden administration put out a much more detailed and comprehensive rule, and that's what's being litigated now is the challenge against the Biden administration's broader rule, and again it's fallen.
Speaker 1:Litigated now is the challenge against the Biden administration's broader rule, and again it's fallen to the Trump administration to decide whether to defend it in court or to replace it or some other means. And I think the short answer is I think they probably will be taking the position in the near term that they don't have to decide, to decide right, because right now, where it sits, the Fifth Circuit is hearing an appeal on the narrow issue of whether the stay of the effective date of the 2024 Biden-era rule, in other words, should the rule, ever go into effect. That is what the Fifth Circuit is deciding. If they decide that the stays were valid, then we go back to the lower court to actually start litigation over whether the rule is valid. So unless the Fifth Circuit decides to lift the stay which I tend to agree with you, I think is unlikely Unless they decide to do that, then we're going to have ongoing litigation and no immediate Probably at least two years, maybe even more.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I think the betting is that the Fifth Circuit will rule, maybe by summer-ish.
Speaker 3:Just on the TRO issue.
Speaker 1:Just on the stay issue. Right, yeah on that. And so even if the Fifth Circuit decides, nope, we're not going to uphold the stay, we'll let the rule go into effect. That would be a precipitating event where the Trump administration will have to then take an action to either change what the substance of the rule is or extend the effective date while they decide to change the substance.
Speaker 3:And the impact of the stay was to go back to the prior 2020-02.
Speaker 1:That's true as modified by the loss in Florida of that anticipated ongoing relationship.
Speaker 3:the court basically said you can't count advice in Ireland, at least in that area of the country, I guess, arguably, who knows Well?
Speaker 1:actually no, because in that case DOL did not challenge the ruling, they didn't appeal the ruling of the district court in Florida. So that actually stands. I think that part of the guidance.
Speaker 3:I guess there's a question of how, if they wanted to, one could see them coming back and saying old 2020-02 as modified as you're suggesting, because you know that's going to be there. They're going to be tending towards that direction anyway.
Speaker 1:I think that's that all of this was a really long build up to. What will they actually do? I mean, the first is they have to decide their. They, the Trump administration, have to decide their posture, and how vigorously are they going to defend a Biden rule that they probably don't agree with in all, the details that they're not going to do. But they might have sympathy for some of its aims. So if you know the course of the-.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think what I've been telling people is as long as you're still, stick with 2020-02,.
Speaker 1:You know, as you were dealing with that before 2020-02, as you were dealing with before, no-transcript, unless the Trump folks do decide to, let's say, use the court process to withdraw the rule and then replace it with something else. But no, you can't predict that, really. No, are you kidding me? I mean, I think it's an unlikely outcome, but it is possible.
Speaker 3:No, I'll take that bet.
Speaker 1:Your bet is nothing happens until after this term of the Trump administration.
Speaker 3:Until there's another administration. I don't think this administration is going to other than saying we don't support the Biden rule and going back to the way we had it before with the modification that we talked about. No, there's no way they want to touch this with a 10 foot pole.
Speaker 1:Hey, I would take that outcome, I hope.
Speaker 3:I'm I feel very confident about that. I mean, you know, republicans are objecting to the ESG rule, which actually isn't that bad. I mean so the idea that they would take on this issue. Considering how polarizing it is, I would strike me as incredibly odd for them to want to take this on.
Speaker 1:Well, you mentioned before how there was this kind of period of harmony in retirement policy in the past. I actually think it's still relatively true. I think compared to many other areas, retirement policy is a lot less that's fair, that is fair. But to your point-.
Speaker 3:Certainly on the legislative side, is much more so than it is on other issues.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but certainly to your point, there are a couple of what have become hot button issues, and when you reference ESG, I think that is going to be the hot button issue in the ERISA space, where we probably are looking at regulatory changes. We probably are looking at more detailed executive orders than we've seen thus far, and I have to agree with you, and this is this is why I would like to say I think I've been pretty even handed in my criticism of the Obama, biden and Trump administrations, of the last three administrations. I actually think the Biden administration did a pretty good job on getting a fairly neutral investment decision-making rule that we call the ESG rule, although it's actually a lot broader than that and we agree with you on that.
Speaker 3:I mean, as we publicly have said, that the rule, notwithstanding all the controversy, if you actually read the rule, which apparently nobody does, it is very balanced.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it basically says fiduciaries can consider these factors where they are essentially relevant to the economic analysis, but in no event can they sacrifice returns or increase risks to achieve collateral objectives.
Speaker 3:You could say that pretty much about anything.
Speaker 1:That's a pretty straightforward analysis that allows you to take into account, say you know, the economic realities of a heavy pollution industry which faces litigation risks and regulatory risks. Nobody would dispute that you should take that into account. But it also allows you to say, yeah, we're not going to invest in the fund that only invests in green energy and doesn't care how much money it loses. That's not a starter for an ERISA plan, and I think the rule as we have it actually does the right balance there. That said, I think that regulation is very much going to be front and center, and I think the recent American Airlines decision is just going to pour some fuel on the fire for this debate.
Speaker 3:So let's. So I'm glad you brought that up. Not so much about ESG, which I agree with you that you know they're going to have to decide how they want to deal with the litigation in the Fifth Circuit. Deal with the litigation in the Fifth Circuit which, unlike the fiduciary rule, the Fifth Circuit seems to be leaning towards actually upholding the rule. But we'll see Litigation in general. There is obviously continuing concerns from a policy standpoint about the proliferation of lawsuits against ERISA plans now bleeding into the health space. In our capacity, now that PSEA is part of ARA, when we do focus groups with large and mega plant sponsors, they repeatedly say to us their number one job is not to get sued. They won't consider anything innovative because their number one job is to make sure that their plan, their employer, doesn't get sued. And it's just, frankly, it's sad and even more so it's having a chilling effect on any innovation because there's such a reticence on the part of these plant sponsors to do anything innovative out of fear of a lawsuit Is there, you think?
Speaker 1:is there some climate in the new administration to try to do something about it? I think there is, but I think ultimately it's going to depend on which officials sit in which seats, and many of those we just don't know yet. And so I agree with you, I think this area is one the wave of class action litigation and, let's just be upfront, there's a very evil synergy between the class action and the contingent fee. Right, if I can come on behalf of a participant and make an argument that a multi-billion dollar pension plan had a fractional percentage of an error, that adds up to a big pile of money that I can now, you know, for the cost of writing up a complaint and doing a little research and then starting to do some discovery.
Speaker 3:And, from what I understand, a lot of these cases are. A lot of these cases are funded with angel investors or, you know, venture capitalists, and and they're they, they they see it as a you know, as an investment opportunity. It has nothing to do with the substance of the case, it's just business. They're filing enough of these cases that they're going to get a return based on 30%, 33% awards.
Speaker 1:That makes it very lucrative from a business standpoint this standpoint and unfortunately for the plan sponsor, the ABC company that has the billion dollar plan. Even if they're 100% in the right and have no questions about how well they did their jobs as fiduciaries or their fiduciary committee did its job, they have to do the green eye shade accounting as well and say, okay, well, we could spend 15, $20 million defending ourselves and proving that we were right, or we could pay $8 million and make these guys go away and the lawyer gets 3 million.
Speaker 1:The participants get usually not much in terms of practical advantage and sort of that system rolls on, as you said, as a business, which I think is unfortunate. That's not what the class action should be doing, and so I'm with you. I think we do need and I think there could be some very effective things that the Trump administration could do, if you look at some of the common trends in ERISA litigation the last five or 10 years good clear regulatory action or good clear guidance, not just through the amicus brief program where the government comes in and states its views in a particular case, but some broad-based guidance could clear up ambiguities that are being exploited in some of these cases, for example, the recent wave in forfeiture litigation.
Speaker 1:That's a place where one I think actually Treasury, irs and labor have all said fairly clearly that this is not an impermissible use of forfeitures to offset employer contributions and I think if there was some additional clarity on that it would really shut down the viability of some of those cases and I think there's several One would think, although sometimes courts choose to ignore that clear guidance regardless. That is true, but it would be helpful, I think, if the-.
Speaker 1:It would certainly be helpful If some of those issues were sort of tackled head on with an eye towards how do we close down some of the common areas of litigation where really it is abusive and not about protecting participants. I think there could be some valuable ground gained there.
Speaker 3:What do you see as other priorities? What about alternative investments?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think we have some pretty clear indications that the Trump administration is in a very different place on things like cryptocurrencies than the prior administration was. You've got the SEC taking some very direct action. You've got now a crypto czar I think the term was at the White House and ultimately that will also reflect back on DOL. You know, as I'm sure many of our listeners here recall the Department of Labor what four years ago now put out, three years ago put out what they called guidance, but I like to think of as a glorified press release that basically, to use a sports analogy- it was a brushback.
Speaker 3:I think they called it a compliance assistance bulletin.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's what it was. It was the new thing they created recently the CAR, the Compliance Assistance Report Bulletin. Is it a cab and not a car? Anyway, there've only been two of them. So you know, maybe I just haven't internalized the acronym yet, but in that they really took some very vague language and said we're concerned about you. Know, fiduciaries are allowed to invest in all sorts of things, or very few restrictions on what's a permissible investment. But here are, you know, eight reasons why we don't like crypto, and we're suggesting to you that if you do this crypto stuff, we will likely investigate you. And that, by the way, isn't just for cryptocurrencies, that's for cryptocurrency and crypto related investments. As though there's no difference between an index fund of a basket of crypto related issues as opposed to buying one security or whatever it is you call a cryptocurrency. Maybe it's not a security. I'll leave that to the securities lawyers to fight that out.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure it included the Trump meme coin. That much I know.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that would certainly be true. And the other thing is they, in that same guidance, again brought up this issue, which has been plaguing us with Labor Department guidance for a while, where they tried to imply that there's a fiduciary obligation to prudently select and monitor everything that's available through the brokerage window, not just the window itself. Even though their regulations clearly state a brokerage window, what's available through the window is not a designated investment alternative subject to those rules. So again they suggested well, if your brokerage window allows some investment in cryptocurrency, that might be imprudent and will investigate you. I think they had to take some steps back on that.
Speaker 1:I think, actually, if I recall it was in an interview with you that Tim Houser, the head, career, clarified. Clarified, some might say, walked back some of those statements. But my point is this was a long rambling diversion. My point is that I think we saw a very anti-crypto and similar private equity stance by the Biden administration. In the prior Trump administration we saw some proactive steps. There was some guidance they put out on private equity investments. That was limited but still sort of provided some narrow avenues.
Speaker 3:Open the window a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wouldn't call it wholehearted embrace, by any means it had a lot of limitations on it, but it was sort of a.
Speaker 3:Would you expect this, you know, trump 2.0 to be a little bit more? You know?
Speaker 1:more welcoming. Let's put it that way I do the impression that I get and ultimately again we'll just go back to this mantra that we don't yet know who's going to be in which seats. So that will affect a lot of this level of guidance, where it's not coming out of the White House but it's coming out of one of the Department of Labor's sub-departments, this one might actually be pushed out of the White House.
Speaker 1:Well, this one might have its own executive order governing, right, own executive order governing. But my point is, though, what the late, what Employee Benefits Security Administration, might say about investments in private equity? I think we're likely to see a more positive stance, but how big an issue that is, I think, will depend in part on who's sitting in the seat as the EPSA assistant secretary and how much they personally want to work on it. Got it?
Speaker 1:But I think it's definitely said you know the new leadership and looking at the SEC, for example. I think it's definitely said we've been doing some things here that we want to review, treat differently Plus the. Sec just recently lost in court on its refusal to engage with some crypto.
Speaker 3:And also, you know I think it'll, at least when it comes to crypto. I continue to be of the view it's going to be hard to consider the ERISA plan implications until the regulatory framework at the federal level has been set up, and you know that still hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1:I would certainly agree with that. So I would say, regardless of what you think or don't think about crypto in terms of it being gambling versus investing, you're right. I think what the SEC is putting in motion is a way to approach it as sort of a legitimate area which we're going to regulate, as a legitimate area which is different in terms of how the government has approached it the last four years.
Speaker 3:Last question Secure 2.0, we're still implementing, and I think this is sort of related. I'm going to kind of weave two thoughts together here. Obviously, the Department of Government Efficiency, Republicans in the House, are very interested in trying to reduce the size of government. You know, you're aware, not only from a budgetary standpoint, but you know there are proposals to incentivize current workers to leave that are out there. Are you concerned about the bandwidth at the agency to be able to deal with either the issues we've talked about or with Secure 2.0 implementation?
Speaker 1:Yes, frankly I am. I mean I'm not saying that translates into we should definitely have, you know, bigger agencies and more government. I'm not saying that translates into we should definitely have bigger agencies and more government. I'm not saying that. But I think we have seen at IRS and DOL that they have been much slower to process like on the IRS side, determination letters, all those normal things we do to interact with the IRS, epcurs, and all of that is taking longer and is causing some consternation that there just isn't the bandwidth over there to do the things that routinely need to get done At labor. I've seen it manifested more in the investigation side of things.
Speaker 1:I got interested in this after the you know, the help not the help committee, the house education, the workforce committee started looking at some of DOL's investigations and so, just of my own interest, I went back and looked 10 years ago versus now. How many civil investigations and criminal investigations was the agency closing? You know how is that working and generally what the numbers show. And just to not have one year be an anomaly, I looked at four years from 2010 to 2013, compared to four years 2020 to 2023, which is the most recent year for which the data is available 23. And it showed a 78% reduction in civil cases closed. It was about a 36% reduction in criminal cases closed.
Speaker 1:There's been the question that then raises is well, does that mean they're just doing fewer cases? And that's not been my experience. My experience as a practitioner is they're doing the same amount of cases, they just take longer. The only data we've really seen to back that up is from a GAO report where they looked at the class of 2017 cases that EBSA opened and four years later, one out of six was still open. So that tends to suggest it's a growing backlog. But we can't see that from the publicly available data, so I just hold that out as an example of where I do think there are bandwidth agencies. If you look at DOL, they will say we had essentially a 20 percent headcount reduction in practice over that same 10 year period. So that really should help explain our problems.
Speaker 3:Plus, they've been given a lot more responsibility due to various pieces of legislation, not just Secure 2.0, the mental health parity legislation at the end of the last Trump administration legislation at the end of the last Trump administration.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, we could have a whole separate discussion about the mental health and substance abuse issues and how the department has been applying those in-.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, that's a different discussion, but it's still it's a very difficult way to do those investigations. That makes it harder rather than-, but it's still a bandwidth issue.
Speaker 1:It is. So anyway, you asked what does this mean for Secure 2.0? Let me get back on topic. Much though I like to ramble, as we can tell, I do worry about the bandwidth here. I think IRS Treasury has been putting out guidance and we've been getting some answers, but I think in general I'll just say I think the regulated community wish we'd had the answers they've given us so far about a year ago, and so there's a timing issue that's raised some concerns there.
Speaker 1:Labor's had some similar issues. It has fewer demands placed on it under Secure 2.0 in terms of responding to some of the day-to-day issues. But you know they had a lot of trials and tribulations with their new missing participant database and problems getting coordination between government to get access to some of the data and issues like that. So I think Secure 2.0, despite the fact that in my view it should have been one of the top priorities of the last administration's sort of pension areas I think frankly DOL spent an awful lot of time on fiduciary. It could have spent on Secure 2.0 implementation. That would have been much more valuable. So, yeah, I do worry about-.
Speaker 3:Certainly, in retrospect, it would have been a much more efficient use of time, that's for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not as though they didn't see the lawsuits coming on that issue, but I guess my point would be I am concerned about the bandwidth, but I also agree that the solution to all these problems isn't to just throw more funding at the government. The question I think we're going to have for the Trump administration, say two years from now, is were you good at breaking things to repair them and remold them into a new, better functioning thing, or were you just good at breaking things to repair them and remold them into a new, better functioning thing? Or were you just good at breaking things? And that's going to be the question they're going to have to answer, you know, a couple of years down the road. I'll throw out another terrible analogy or metaphor.
Speaker 3:No, that was solid.
Speaker 1:You like that one, All right. Well, let me mess it up by throwing out another one. Surgery comes with swelling and bleeding and all the difficult things. But you know, four months later you're better than you were before. Are we in the swelling, cutting, bleeding phase, or you really should have stopped. You stop with the other one.
Speaker 3:Thank you, brad, listen, we appreciate your time. I don't know if that's your music or my music.
Speaker 1:My apologies. Yes, I have still been trying to figure out how to turn this jabber thing off. Oh, I think.
Speaker 3:Joey's good at editing stuff, so don't worry about it. Anyway, thank you so much for your time. There's obviously a ton of stuff going on. Really appreciate your insight and kind of at least a window into what to expect over the next four years. It's not going to be boring.
Speaker 1:It definitely is not, and I just want to stop with an unsolicited plug for the work that you guys do at the ARA and, brian, what you've done, you know you've been one of these guys who's been working behind the scenes here for 20, 30 years on these issues and I don't think everybody else in the real world I know DC pension geeks do but I don't know that everyone else appreciates how big an impact you've actually had on making things better over time. So I do just want to throw that unsolicited praise out there.
Speaker 3:Very kind, Brad. You've made a difference too. Thank you, We'll keep on going. There's still a lot of work to do right that there is.
Speaker 1:Thanks, brett, thank you.