Tag: DOL

GOP Lawmakers Demand Answers from Biden-Harris Admin on ‘Botched’ Rollout of Huge Jobs Revision

Daily Caller News Foundation
Office Work

Republican lawmakers wrote to Department of Labor (DOL) Acting Secretary Julie Su on Friday, slamming the agency for ignoring an oversight request regarding its “botched release” of data that showed the Biden-Harris administration had wildly overestimated job creation.

The August Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) release  — which revealed the U.S. economy had created more than 800,000 fewer jobs in the twelve months through March than the administration had claimed — was posted roughly a half hour late, with a slew of Wall Street investment firms obtaining details about the report at least 15 minutes before the public. Republican Reps. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and Bob Good of Virginia issued an oversight request following the incident, which the DOL then failed to respond to, prompting the lawmakers to re-up their inquiry into whether or not the BLS favored Wall Street insiders over the American public, according to the letter obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Jobless Claims Soar to Highest Levels Since 2021

Michigan Star Staff

The number of Americans who filed new unemployment claims increased more than expected to 261,000 in the week ending June 3, the Department of Labor (DOL) reported Thursday.

Claims rose 28,000 compared to the previous week’s revised level, the highest number since October 2021, when it was 264,000, according to the DOL. This substantially exceeded the median forecast, which was 236,000, according to MarketWatch.

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Commentary: The Biden Administration’s ERISA Work-Around

RealClearWire

Rising inflation threatens the value of Americans’ retirement savings. Now the Biden administration is finalizing a rule to loosen safeguards under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) that protect private retirement savings. The new rule, “Prudence and Loyalty in Selecting Plan Investments and Exercising Shareholder Rights,” stems from President Biden’s May 20, 2021, Executive Order on Climate-Related Financial Risk, which directed senior White House advisers to develop a strategy for financing the administration’s net-zero climate goals, including the use of private savings. 

Predictably, Wall Street is cheering the prospect of undoing ERISA safeguards. According to one analysis, 97% of comment letters support the proposal. But as I show in my RealClear Foundation report The Biden Administration’s ERISA Work-Around, it’s the remaining three percent that should give the Department of Labor (DOL) cause to rethink its deeply flawed approach.

Under ERISA, retirement savings must be invested for the exclusive purpose of providing retirement benefits. The May 2021 executive order illustrates the very danger that ERISA’s exclusive-purpose rule is designed to guard against. To achieve the goals set out in the order, DOL is instructed to “suspend, revise or rescind” two Trump-era rules designed to uphold ERISA’s exclusive-purpose rule.

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