Quote

I wasn't thinking about my pension plan until about two years ago. When I was in my twenties, the idea that you'd be thinking of taking a job based on its health-care policy was completely foreign. But these days young people are thinking about these things.

401k savings accounts have become so important in the landscape of retirement planning that their security and expansion became a top priority in formulating and implementing the Pension Protection Act of 2006 that was enacted during my tenure as the U.S. Secretary of Labor.

My view is pensioners don't have the one option that people of working age have. They can't really increase their income, because they are no longer able to work.

When I was young, many people worked for a company with a pension plan that covered them for as long as they lived. If they didn't have a pension plan, they could count on Social Security and Medicare.

A well-designed 401(k) plan is an enormous competitive edge when recruiting and retaining employees.

Retirement security is often compared to a three-legged stool supported by Social Security, employer-provided pension funds, and private savings.

Pension reforms, like investment advice and automatic enrollment, will strengthen the ability of Americans to save and invest for retirement.

Things that have happened with Enron and companies like that, where they've squandered their employees' pension funds, I think it has brought a new level of anxiety. People don't feel like they can trust their employer.

Under Reagan came the idea of putting your pension plan in the stock market, which wasn't a guaranteed pension.

In some cases, managers and employees have secured pensions beyond their original base salary. It is wrong, the people doing it know it's wrong, and we have to put an end to it.