Compliance March 10, 2025

Senate Confirms Chavez-DeRemer as Secretary of Labor

Monday’s full Senate vote came after President Donald Trump’s pick to head the Department of Labor was cleared by the HELP Committee last month.

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This story has been updated following the Senate’s final vote.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer

The U.S. Senate voted Monday to confirm Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon as secretary of labor under President Donald Trump.

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Senate members voted 67 to 32, securing Chavez-DeRemer’s opportunity to lead the Department of Labor.

Senators Rand Paul, R-Kentucky; Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky; and Tedd Budd, R-North Carolina, voted against Chavez-DeRemer’s confirmation. Senator John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania, did not vote.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions voted last month 14 to 9 to advance Chavez-DeRemer to the full Senate. Senators Maggie Hassan, D-New Hampshire; Tim Kaine, D-Virginia; and John Hickenlooper, D-Colorado, joined Republican committee members to support Trump’s nominee.

The three Democratic members’ support offset a “no” vote from Paul, who previously criticized Chavez-DeRemer for her support, as a member of the House of Representatives representing Oregon’s 5th congressional district, of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2023, which sought to make it easier for workers to unionize.

However, Chavez-DeRemer said during her nomination hearing that she no longer supports the aspect of the PRO Act that would have overturned state right-to-work laws.

A nomination hearing for Daniel Aronowitz, Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary of labor to lead the Employee Benefits Security Administration, has yet to be scheduled.

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Operations Vince Micone had served as acting secretary of labor since Trump’s January 21 inauguration.

Products March 10, 2025

TIAA Expands Lifetime Income Access Through IRAs

Working Americans can now gain access to TIAA’s fixed and variable annuity products through the company’s individual retirement accounts.

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TIAA announced Monday that it is expanding access to its lifetime income annuity products by offering them through the TIAA individual retirement account.

This allows anyone to have access to TIAA’s annuities, regardless of where they work. New enrollees in a TIAA IRA can select among TIAA’s annuities, including TIAA Traditional and the CREF variable annuities.

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David Hughs, managing director of IRA product management at TIAA, says lifetime income has always been part of the TIAA IRA, but this expansion allows all working Americans, not just those in the nonprofit industry, to access these products.

“This is really driven by demand,” Hughs says. “Our advisers hear all the time from their clients [about] the desire for certainty that only guaranteed lifetime income can deliver. … Now we want to expand that access to all working Americans.”

Previously, Hughs explains, TIAA IRA clients needed to meet eligibility requirements, which included having either a personal or close family relationship with a not-for-profit employer. Now, this restriction has been lifted.

Hughs says the IRA and lifetime income products are also available to retail investors.

When an individual opens an IRA with TIAA, the individual will have the opportunity to save in TIAA Traditional, the company’s flagship fixed annuity. Investors can control whether, when and how much of their savings they want to turn into retirement income.

Hughs says the traditional fixed-annuity product offers a 4.57% rate, which is also fully liquid.

One can estimate a monthly retirement check from TIAA Traditional by using a calculator tool on the website.

The longer an individual saves in TIAA Traditional in a workplace plan, the larger the loyalty bonus he is eligible to receive, which will increase the income he can receive when lifetime income payments commence.

TIAA also projected that in 2025, retirees could earn 33% more money in their first year of retirement with a fixed annuity than they would if they used a 4% withdrawal strategy alone.

For example, a 67-year-old retiree with $1 million in savings could spend $40,000 in the first year of retirement using the 4% rule. TIAA argued that if the same person used one-third of their savings to provide income from a fixed annuity and began receiving payouts on March 1, 2025—and withdrew 4% of the remaining two-thirds—they would get $53,154 to spend in the first year of retirement.

TIAA paid more than $5.9 billion in lifetime income to retired clients in 2024 and has $1.4 trillion in assets under management as of December 31, 2024.

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