The Biden Administration Aims to Dictate Retirement Investments
If you’re someone who thinks the progressive movement in our nation is looking to push its agenda in every way, look no further than environmental, social, and governance (known as “ESG”) investing. ESG demands that a company or an investment shouldn’t be scored on its financial returns or viability but instead on how green or progressive it is according to an ever-changing and loosely defined litmus test of ESG.
Basically, left-wing activists can
make ESG mean whatever they want to get a company to agree with their radical
environmental philosophy, liberal social issues, or their demand to put their
left-wing activists on their board—or they’re discriminatory. If the company
won’t capitulate to the left, they get a lower ESG score and public pressure to
bend to their will. Unfortunately, most public companies cave to the left.
The Department of Labor recently
set an ESG rule that allows retirement plans to use Americans’ retirement
savings to advance a green-energy and social-justice political agenda. The Biden
administration’s rule tells the federal government to root out threats from
climate-related financial risks and use that information to supposedly protect
the life savings and pensions of America’s workers and families.
Their political preferences have taken over your
retirement funds. Investment companies, including those who choose where to
invest Americans’ retirement funds, have been encouraged by the far left to
steer client investments toward companies that practice social and/or
environmental justice rather than toward the best investments, either now or
for retirement. Retirement funds used to be about families preparing for the
future. Now apparently they’re about liberal political preferences.
The Office of the Comptroller of
the Currency (OCC) and the FDIC are on a parallel track to force
“climate-related financial risks” on assessing the safety and soundness of
financial institutions, and the OCC is creating a Chief Climate Risk Officer.
Financial institutions are scrambling with the uncertainty of complying with
Biden’s climate agenda instead of leaning on traditional sound lending
practices. The SEC has released a 490-page climate risk disclosure rule that
could impact all facets of the economy, including small agriculture operations
in Oklahoma and elsewhere.
Like retirement investment companies,
utility companies are forced to capitulate to Green New Deal climate-change
activists if they have any hope of staying in the energy market because of ESG.
If companies aren’t pushing out coal, natural gas, and oil and moving toward
renewables, no matter the additional cost to customers, they’re being told
their days may be numbered. Gun manufacturers and traditional oil and gas
companies have already experienced the loss of capital access simply because of
their business type.
Oklahomans and others around our nation
show their support or dislike of a company, a product, or a social justice
movement with their wallets. That is where capitalism shines because
individuals have a choice in where they shop, who they support, and which
companies align with their values. Those on the left say people demand that
companies implement ESG polices, but what they really mean is the media and
activists demand those changes. Other people vote with their wallets and time.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) grades its citizens and
businesses with a social credit system that determines whether the CCP thinks
they’re a good citizen/company or not based on factors including whether a
person attends government-backed events, etc. The punishment for a low social
credit is being banned from flights, blocked from student loans, and restricted
or throttled internet use.
The Biden administration’s ESG and
social justice activists use their bully pulpit to run whole industries out of
town. That’s why, last year my colleagues and I worked to stop their onerous
rule that encourages fiduciaries to support left-leaning social and
environmental justice priorities. I directly questioned Energy Secretary
Granholm to confront the administration on their energy policies that raise the
price of everything, and I introduced the Energy Regulations Certainty Act to
help ensure Biden’s overreaching climate-change focused regulations don’t
continue to hinder US energy.
My team and I are watching the
social and environmental justice movements within the Biden administration
closely to be sure Americans are not the last to know about the left pushing
their agenda, rather than protect Americans and their money.
By: Senator James Lankford (R-OK)
Source: The Washington Times
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