Sen. Murray and Rep. Scott: Trump Administration’s Weak Fiduciary Rule Will Hurt Families, Benefit Unscrupulous Financial Advisors

Murray and Scott: “People are looking for reliable help as they try to navigate the painful economic fallout of this pandemic—but this rule will make that unbiased help even harder to find.”

(Washington, D.C.) – Today, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Congressman Robert C. “Bobby Scott (VA-03), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, released the following statement in response to the Department of Labor announcing its final fiduciary rule. 

“This weak rule will hurt workers, retirees, and families across the country by letting unscrupulous financial advisors put their own interests ahead of their clients’. People are looking for reliable help as they try to navigate the painful economic fallout of this pandemic—but this rule will make that unbiased help even harder to find. We are going to do everything we can to work with the incoming Biden Administration to reverse the damage of President Trump’s backwards policies and to strengthen the retirement security of people across the country as they work to weather this crisis.”

Senator Murray and Congressman Scott have been leading voices against the Trump Administration’s efforts to weaken the conflict of interest rules protecting families’ savings and investments. They called out the Trump Administration for refusing to defend the stronger Obama-era fiduciary standard in court, pressed it to slow down its attempt to rush through its own weaker rule before stakeholders had the opportunity to weigh in, and led a comment letter criticizing the Department’s rule for “reinstating a broken status quo that allows financial advisors to evade their fiduciary duties and denying retirement savers meaningful remedies when they have been harmed.”

###