Trump Takes Credit For Biden-Era $1,000 Match For Low-Income Retirement Plans

WASHINGTON – A proposal to give lower-income workers a $1,000 federal match for their retirement accounts, one of President Donald Trump’s few policy ideas in his State of the Union speech, is actually already on the books, thanks to a 2022 law signed by Democratic predecessor Joe Biden.

“Half of all of working Americans still do not have access to a retirement plan with matching contributions from an employer. To remedy this gross disparity, I am announcing that next year, my administration will give these often-forgotten American workers, great people, the people that built our country, access to the same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker. We will match your contribution with up to $1,000 each year,” Trump proclaimed in his remarks, which at 108 minutes broke his own record for longest address to a joint session of Congress.

What he neglected to mention was that the proposal is already law of the land, set to begin in 2027. The idea was one of numerous revisions to retirement plans contained in the bipartisan SECURE 2.0 Act, which was rolled into the 2023 appropriations bill that Biden signed into law on Dec. 29, 2022.

“Nothing Trump does surprises me anymore: not being associated with a pedophile in Jeffrey Epstein, not making a case for war with Iran, and not taking credit for a Biden-era policy and then immediately blaming Biden for everything else,” said Alexandra LaManna, a former Treasury Department spokesperson during the Biden administration

The specific “Saver’s Match” language gives lower-income workers a 50% match on their own contributions to a retirement account, with a limit of $1,000 per year. The match begins to phase out for those whose adjusted gross incomes exceed $20,500 for single filers and $41,000 for married couples filing jointly.

It is unclear what precisely Trump would do to enhance that, although his reference to “same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker” suggests that workers would have the option of having an account administered by the federal government.

Trump White House spokeswoman Kush Desai attacked Biden personally and suggested that the “Saver’s Match” provision was created by the original SECURE Act that Trump signed into law in his first term in 2019.

“Joe Biden was a disaster, and no one wants to take ‘credit’ for anything associated with that failure of a presidency. It was President Trump who signed the bipartisan SECURE Act into law in 2019, while Joe Biden likely auto-penned additions to President Trump’s legislation in a larger appropriations act that few D.C. insiders, let alone everyday American workers, are familiar with,” Desai said.

However, the original 2019 law did not create the provision in question, and the $1,000 match did not become law until 2022, with an implementation date of 2027.

The Treasury Department, which would be in charge of the program, did not respond to a HuffPost query.

In an interview with NBC News following the speech, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent implied that the whole program was Trump’s idea.

“The president wanted to preview it in his speech, but I think this is going to be a very big part of working Americans’ retirement program, because there is a tremendous amount of financial insecurity,” he said.

Desai said later that the administration is still crafting language to make the program easier to access for those who need it.

Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin said taking credit for others’ work is not surprising from Trump.

“Trump has spent much of his career slapping his name on other people’s work, and this latest attempt was just as pathetic as the last,” he said. “Making life more affordable is the issue Americans care about most, and he’s failing at it, because he’s actually focused on looking out for billionaires, not working families.”