One Generation Away: Kendra Isaacson on What Washington Is Getting Right on Retirement—and What We Still Need
Kendra Isaacson is one of Washington's most respected voices on retirement security. As a Partner at Mindset—a bipartisan public policy firm based in DC—she brings a rare mix of experience: years inside the U.S. Department of Labor, a decade shaping legislation as Pensions Policy Director and Senior Tax Counsel for Senator Patty Murray and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and now a front-row seat to the policy debate from the private sector. She was a key architect of SECURE 2.0, the landmark 2022 retirement law, and helped design some of its most innovative provisions—including the pension-linked emergency savings accounts (PLESAs). She also teaches at Georgetown University Law Center. This week we sit down with Kendra to talk coverage gaps, Trump Accounts, the Saver's Match, and the question she wishes more people were asking.
“Any time a president wants to talk about closing the retirement coverage gap in a State of the Union address, I think that’s great .”
Kendra, let's start with your current work. What are you focused on right now?
Right now, my most immediate focus is on an upcoming Senate HELP Committee markup. They're looking at a fix to the pension-linked emergency savings accounts—PLESAs—which was one of Senator Murray's top priorities in SECURE 2.0. The fix would increase the contribution cap and remove the rule that keeps highly compensated employees from participating. Removing that restriction makes the program look cleaner and more fair. So that’s in the works.
I also represent the ESOP Association, and there's work happening at the Department of Labor around the Work Act—another SECURE 2.0 provision—that would extend and expand support for employee ownership. That's exciting.
Beyond those immediate items, I'm working on a range of tax provisions, including Trump Accounts and TrumpIRA, and on making rollovers smoother. And I still get to work on multi-employer pension issues, which I genuinely love. The technical depth of that work is fascinating. I feel like I get to do all the things I used to do—just from a different seat.
You've looked at the retirement coverage gap from inside Congress, from the Department of Labor, and now from the private sector. Has your view of the problem changed?
Honestly, my view hasn't changed much. I think it's a real problem—and it has taken such a long time to make a dent in it because it's genuinely hard to solve. We're talking about people who aren't in traditional workplaces. They're harder to reach. And in many cases, they simply don't have enough money to save right now. That's a different kind of challenge than the retirement system was built to handle.
I don't think there's one solution that will fix everything. It's going to take a combination of things working together. On the Hill, there have been proposals aimed at gig workers and non-traditional workers. SECURE 1.0 and SECURE 2.0 both made real progress on covering part-time workers. We are making progress—but the problem is still there, no matter which angle you look from.
Here's what I will say: any time a president wants to talk about closing the retirement coverage gap in a State of the Union address, I think that's great. And that is exactly what President Trump did earlier this year. His executive order had some mixed messages—he referenced the Australian retirement system, which works quite differently from ours—but the direction of travel seems to be more support for state Auto IRA programs, and perhaps getting closer to consensus on federal legislation. That's encouraging. We might be getting closer to taking that final step.
Where does the Retirement Savings for Americans Act (RSAA) actually stand—and does it have a clear path forward?
RSAA—also called TSP for All—is championed by Senators Hickenlooper and Tillis in the Senate, and has bipartisan support in the House as well. I think it has legs. I think all of these proposals have legs right now, because this has become such a prominent national conversation.
That said, there are real barriers. Senator Tillis is leaving Congress at the end of this year, and his relationship with the Trump administration has not been smooth. That complicates things for RSAA specifically.
On the Auto IRA side, Ranking Member Neal on the House Ways and Means Committee has long championed a similar approach. But historically, that bill has stayed on the Democratic side of the aisle—partly because Republicans have pushed back on the idea of a mandate. Here's the irony, though: RSAA has a mandate in it too. So maybe we're finally turning the corner on our feelings about mandates. Maybe we just need a new word for them—'requirements' has a nicer ring to it.
The bigger obstacle is cost. These programs involve tax incentives, and tax incentives cost money—at least on paper. The budget score for something like RSAA would be steep, and Congress has been watching costs closely. In the recent reconciliation bill, Republicans had to make a lot of unpopular cuts to pay for their priorities. Finding money for a coverage expansion could mean cutting existing retirement tax incentives—and I don't think that would go over well. We got a preview of this in 2017, when there was a proposal to convert all 401(k) savings to Roth accounts. The reaction was immediate. By Monday morning there was a presidential tweet saying nothing would change.
I don't think we're going to see this solved this Congress. But I am genuinely heartened that people on both sides are having these conversations—and starting to realize that those in the 'TSP for All' camp and the Auto IRA camp aren't actually that far apart. They have the same goal: covering people who don't have coverage.
Retirement policy works best when it's bipartisan. It makes the system more durable. I hope we can put politics aside—as we usually do in retirement—and find real consensus.
The Saver's Match takes effect for tax year 2027, and TrumpIRA.gov is set to launch by January 1, 2027. How well do these two pieces fit together—and what still needs to happen?
I'm genuinely excited about the Saver's Match. Under SECURE 2.0, starting in tax year 2027, the federal government will match up to 50% of the first $2,000 that a lower- or moderate-income worker contributes to a qualifying retirement account—up to $1,000 per year, deposited directly into their retirement savings. That's real money for real people.
I think there's strong bipartisan support for expanding it even further—raising the income limits, for example. President Trump has signaled his support, which means Republicans are largely on board. And Democrats have always been in favor. Could this be a bright spot that gets done before the end of the year? Maybe. Magic tends to happen in retirement policy around the holidays.
As for how the Saver's Match and TrumpIRA.gov fit together: I think they're going to complement each other well. If you have access to a qualifying IRA—and TrumpIRA.gov is designed to help people find one—then you can be eligible for the Saver's Match when you start contributing. One opens the door; the other puts money through it.
I think of TrumpIRA in two parts. The first part is what's already been announced: a marketplace website where people can compare and choose low-cost, high-quality IRAs. Based on the executive order, IRAs on the platform will meet certain minimum standards—low fees, a focus on index funds and investing in America. People may feel more comfortable knowing those options have been vetted. Will some people be put off by the name 'Trump IRA'? Probably. Will others be more drawn to it because of the name? Also probably. We are in an unusual moment.
The second part is what Treasury is working on now—and there are fewer details to share here. My best read is they're looking at how to work with providers to offer auto-enrollment for gig workers and people whose employers don't offer a plan. A lot of that will likely require legislation, and I expect we'll see the outlines of a proposal before year's end.
When you knit these pieces together—the Saver's Match, TrumpIRA.gov, and potential new legislation—there's a real opportunity to bridge the gap between today's competing proposals and arrive at something that can actually be implemented at scale.
“We are one generation away from everybody having a retirement account. I feel like we are on the cusp of something really cool.”
You've worked with both sides of the aisle on retirement issues. What's one retirement policy idea with real bipartisan energy that most people outside Washington haven't heard about?
I'm going to stick with the Saver's Match—even though it's technically already law. It goes live next year, but there's still a lot of work to do on education and outreach. Making sure that everyone who is eligible actually knows about it and takes advantage of it is enormous. We cannot assume people will find it on their own.
The other one I'd highlight is more straightforward: lowering the minimum age to participate in a workplace retirement plan from 21 to 18. If we're telling young people they don't need a college degree to build a good career—and we are saying that more and more as a country—then why would we keep an 18-year-old who goes straight into the workforce from joining a retirement plan? It doesn't make sense. That's a fix with real bipartisan support, and it would make a meaningful difference for a generation of workers.
What's the one question about retirement policy you wish more reporters and advocates were asking right now?
I'm going to shape your question into the one I really want to answer.
We talk a lot about getting people into the retirement system. But one of the biggest reasons people don't save for retirement is that they don't have enough money to cover today's expenses. That link—between short-term financial security and long-term retirement savings—is something I wish got a lot more attention.
The theory behind the pension-linked emergency savings accounts in SECURE 2.0 was exactly this: if people can build a small emergency cushion connected to their retirement account, they'll feel more comfortable entering the system. When the emergency savings run out, they'd get matched into retirement savings. It's the 'envelope' concept from personal finance—built right into the plan design.
The research supports this. Organizations like Commonwealth, Pew, and the Aspen Institute have done important work here. And in the United Kingdom, they've trialed something like it -- called sidecar savings -- and it works. When people have access to short-term savings, they stop raiding their retirement accounts. Loans go down. Hardship withdrawals go down. Getting PLESAs right and making them widely available is one of my biggest priorities.
And here's my bonus answer, because I have two things on my mind.
There's a bigger question underneath all of this that I've been thinking about a lot lately—and I'll be honest, it's personal. I have a 10-year-old daughter. I'm starting to think about my parents' long-term care needs. I'm trying to save for college, for retirement, for multiple goals at once. Even for someone who works in this field every day, it's overwhelming to figure out how all of these savings needs fit together—especially when there's only so much money to go around.
The question I wish more people were asking is: how do we make our savings system more connected? Not just more products, but more interoperability. How do we make it easier to move money across accounts as life changes? How do we make savings vehicles more fungible, more transferable, more responsive to real life?
And here's where I think Trump Accounts might be part of the answer. If the government auto-enrolls every newborn into a Trump Account, we are one generation away from every American having an IRA from birth. That changes everything—the missing participants problem, the scattered small-balance problem, the lost-money problem. The policy is good, and the potential is enormous. We are playing 4D chess here. Because there is so much that could be built, and that is genuinely exciting.
