Herald Tribune – President Barack Obama speaks at the at 2015 White House Conference on Aging, Monday, July 13, 2015, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. The president said a secure retirement is a critical component of what it means to be middle class in America.
Earlier this year President Barack Obama’s administration took a small swipe at the financial industry by making it harder for investment advisers to sell products that were not in retirees’ best interests. But on Monday, Obama gave the industry a major boost by announcing an initiative that would encourage all states to establish universal 401(k) plans, available to every worker in the nation.
The occasion was the one-day White House Conference on Aging, which gathered 200 invited delegates in the East Room and urged other Americans to listen in via livestream and ask questions on Twitter. The forum is generally held every 10 years. This one was a low-budget version of the first such conference in 1961, which involved 3,000 delegates tackling 13 topics, and gave rise to the 1965 Older Americans Act.
Congress has failed to reauthorize that legislation, which expired in 2011. Repeated calls to address this oversight punctuated the White House event. Expert panels also discussed ways to support caregivers, help Americans plan for longevity, prevent financial exploitation and abuse, design technology to make aging easier, and inspire more older adults to go outside for a walk.
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