Federal Relations at the American Council of Life Insurers Vice President and Deputy Kathleen Coulombe joins Yahoo Finance Live to explain how the Secure Act 2.0 could impact retirement plans and America's retirement crisis.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Retirement savers are feeling pretty gloomy about their personal finances. Now, according to a new AARP study, only 17% of Americans older than 50 years are feeling confident, very confident, that they will have enough money throughout their retirement. Also, 20% of people in their 20s never expect to retire.

Let's talk all about all this with Kathleen Coulombe. She is Vice President of Retirement Security and Principal Deputy of Federal Relations at American Council of Life Insurers. Kathleen, it's great to see you. So I guess, first, just your reaction to this and what it tells us just about Americans and the lack thereof saving for retirement.

KATHLEEN COULOMBE: Right, Seana, there's some folks that have been left on the sidelines of the retirement savings game who either have not much saved at all or nothing saved. And so I think Congress is really taking a look at how they can take some steps to encourage folks to save more and save earlier on in their lives to ensure that they have this nest egg when they're ready to retire.

DAVE BRIGGS: And so that's where the SECURE Act 2.0 comes in. Tell us about that.

KATHLEEN COULOMBE: So this large bill has passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly earlier this year-- 414 to 5, which is somewhat unheard of. It enjoys bipartisan support. It's gone through the committee process in the Senate.

And now, it's really gearing up for hopefully primetime, some action in December as we head towards the end of the year-- hopefully riding along with some type of omnibus spending package. And it really seeks to help a lot of these vulnerable populations. There's something in the bill for just about everyone, including military spouses, student loan borrowers, part-time workers, and those that are at or close to retirement who may, like you pointed out, may not have enough saved for retirement.

SEANA SMITH: Kathleen, talk to us just about the chances of this getting passed. Obviously, attaching this to a must-pass bill is going to increase those chances-- and then also the bipartisan support that we're seeing for this bill.

KATHLEEN COULOMBE: So it's interesting-- retirement security policy generally has a lot of bipartisan support. We saw the SECURE Act in 2019. That's how, really, that bill got over the finish line, with dozens of provisions that were bipartisan. And similarly, SECURE 2.0 has kind of taken a page out of that playbook and done the same.