Retirement Issues and WI Candidates: U.S. Senate and WI Treasurer

For Immediate Release:

June 13, 2022

POWRS Steering Committee, Philip Anderson, powerswi@gmail.com

Retirement Issues and WI Candidates: U.S. Senate and WI Treasurer

To better inform Wisconsin voters, Protect Our Wisconsin Retirement Security (POWRS) surveyed the U.S. Senate candidates on retirement, Social Security and Medicare issues. We sent the survey to all the declared Democratic candidates and to the Republican incumbent.

We only received replies from four Democratic candidates: Mandela Barnes, Sarah Godlewski, Alex Lasry, and Tom Nelson.

POWRS makes no candidate endorsements. Our objective is to inform voters to help in making their own choices. We have compiled the candidate responses into one document and posted it to our website. Read the complete, unedited candidates’ comments at www.powrs.org.

The Wisconsin Treasurer’s office was involved in leading Gov. Evers’ retirement task force. POWRS provided input to the task force and we hope the next Treasure works to expand retirement options for all Wisconsin residents.

POWRS interviewed two Democratic candidates for WI Treasurer on retirement issues. Voters can see the unedited Zoom videos at the POWRS website www.powrs.org.

Wisconsin – and the nation – is facing a retirement security crisis. Many people will have inadequate income for a secure retirement. Many will only have Social Security to live on. Many will not be able to “retire” at all. Over 400,000 seniors in Wisconsin will be living in poverty by 2030. As a result, Wisconsin will need to spend an additional $3.5 billion on public assistance programs.

These problems are not self-correcting and won’t be fixed by free market “solutions.” Our governments must act to address the retirement crisis. This includes consolidating and simplifying related laws, better oversight of the investment industry, helping small businesses to offer retirement benefits, and creating better programs to help people prepare for retirement.