Legend - Congressman George Miller

Congressman George Miller (D-California) may be 66 now, but there was a time when former fellow Congressman Dan Rostenkowski called him the “kid.” The moniker was bestowed because Miller was only 29 when he started representing the 7th District of California in 1975. Now the Ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Miller says that Rostenkowski called him “kid” up until he died a year ago last August.

In his time in Congress, Miller has been a leader in the effort to protect Americans’ retirement and health security. “I’m doing this for the middle-class worker,” he says, “I’m a product of the middle class and I see every day how hard it is for workers to make these decisions.”

He has been productive in that role. Under his leadership in the 111th and 110th Congress, the Education and Labor Committee shepherded 14 bills that were signed into law and dozens of others that passed the House. According­ to the House Historian, in the 110th and 111th Congresses, the Education and Labor Committee was the most productive committee in the history of the House of Representatives.

Miller is also somewhat infamous for being a landlord­ to fellow Democratic congressmen and senators. As chronicled in The New York Times in September 2010, Miller owns a house on Capitol Hill in which he rents rooms and beds to other members of the House and Senate, as well as living there himself. Living in a manner described as being somewhat akin to an all-male Congressional frat house, his current and former housemates have included Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Bill Delahunt, Marty Russo, and Leon Panetta.

Miller says his interest in legislating for retirement and health plans came about because of his position on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which deals with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). In particular, he says, the Committee’s involvement with the United Airlines Pension Plan bankruptcy and IBM’s conversion from a traditional pension plan to a cash balance plan made him question whether the rules for protecting employees were adequate. He became involved with the Pension Protection Act of 2006, he says, because he believed people were getting conflicted advice, and believed that they should be aware of that if they did.

Miller says that he often relies on advisers in the industry to explain to him how 401(k) plans and their investments work.

Miller also has been passionate about and involved in improving transparency of fees in 401(k) plans years before the Department of Labor took up the issue. When he was in charge of the Committee on Education and Labor, these issues were looked into by the Committee. He continues to work toward better transparency of fees and getting participants access to independent advice to help them make the right decisions, although he admits that little is likely to happen legislatively in the near term while the Republicans control the House.

Miller says that, in his time in Congress, he has seen the 401(k) plan grow as the plan of choice for employers. In doing so, he says, employers shifted the risk of ade­quate retirement saving to workers, he says. Because of this, he realized that workers need to have disclosures in plain, common sense language. Workers, he says, need to understand the real cost of an investment option or what the impact of fees will be on their ultimate retirement nest egg.

Miller believes that current disclosures and education are not adequate. “The industry gives lip service to education, but things often are not what they are represented to be,” he says. If workers are supposed to take responsibility for their own retirement, he argues, they need information to make informed decisions.

If people sacrifice and save over their working lives, Miller says, they need a transparent process to make sure that those involved with that money are acting to the highest duty and loyalty. “Middle-class workers have to make tough choices to put money away for retirement in 401(k) plans,” he says.

Miller emphasizes that, for middle-class families to save, they have to make sacrifices to do so, so this money, and how it is handled, is extremely important to them. “It’s not the financial services industry’s money,” says Miller. “It’s that family’s money.” The financial services industry, he says, owes those middle-class workers the highest level of fiduciary duty in every aspect of the handling of those savings.

The problem, says Miller, is that disclosures are not always clear, and most participants cannot understand them. “Fees and commissions matter over the working life of an individual,” he says, “so they should be disclosed and plainly understood.”

Miller says that even small fees on 401(k) accounts can add up over time—particularly in a down market. In a downturn, he says, workers cannot give away any more of their savings to unnecessary fees—something about which 401(k) plan participants are becoming increasing cognizant. “There’s a greater awareness of how difficult it is to time retirement and time a nest egg,” he says.

Miller further argues that it is in the best interest of the financial services industry to be as transparent as possible. If people do not have great confidence in the system, they are not going to continue to save in 401(k) plans, says Miller.

Miller is not above political theatrics in attempting to get his point across regarding 401(k) plan fees. In June 2010, pies were delivered to each Finance Committee Senator with a slice missing representing the fees Wall Street takes from 401(k) account­holders. At a press conference, Miller held up a slice of pie and asked that the Senate put fee disclosure requirements back into H.R. 4213. The fee disclosure rules were part of the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act passed by the House. Despite the pies, however, the fee disclosure rules were not put back into H.R. 4213.  —Elayne Robertson Demby 

The “Legend” 

George Miller was touting “fee disclosure” long before it was the industry buzzword it is today (he has said that retirement accounts “should not just be the happy hunting grounds for fees and commissions”). He has been an outspoken critic of “conflicted” advice, introducing legislation to improve fee disclosure more than once. Miller has called the 401(k) “an inadequate vehicle” that “has not been terribly successful” in encouraging savings—and his hearings on the subject were controversial, fueling reports of a “plot to kill the 401(k),” that led Miller to say in 2008, “I do not support ‘abolishing’ 401(k)s, moving these plans, or changing their tax status, plain and simple.”

Congressman George Miller is the Senior Democrat of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce (he was chairman of that committee from 2007 through 2010, and has served on it since he first came to Congress) and Chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, a leadership position. Miller, who has represented the 7th District of California in the East Bay of San Francisco since 1975, is a leading advocate in Congress on education, labor, the economy, and the environment. He considers himself a leader in the effort to protect Americans’ retirement and health security; to further innovation in technology, science, and education; to make college more affordable; to improve child nutrition; to make k-12 public schools more successful; and to reduce global warming. A life-long Democrat and Californian, Miller was born in Richmond, California, on May 17, 1945, and currently lives in Martinez, California, with his family. A product of the California public higher education system, he graduated from Diablo Valley Community College, San Francisco State University, and earned a law degree from the University of California, Davis, School of Law.