Gregory Korte

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Changes that President Obama will propose to employer-sponsored retirement plans could help 30 million American workers have access to retirement savings, the White House said Monday.

Obama's plan consists of of a number of legislative proposals, which he'll outline in the 2017 budget he'll submit to Congress next month. They include:

► Offering tax credits to small businesses that automatically enroll employees in a new 401(k)-style retirement plan — or requiring them to offer payroll deductions to an Individual Retirement Account if they don't offer a company plan.

► Requiring companies with existing plans to offer them to long-term, part-time workers who work 500 hours a year for three years; and

► Making it easier for companies to pool their retirement plans to bring down expenses through multiple employer plans.

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The White House previewed the proposals for reporters Monday but did not immediately reveal their budgetary impact. In addition to the newly proposed tax credits for businesses, the changes would give millions of Americans a tax cut by allowing them to defer taxes on their retirement savings.

The retirement proposals are part of an economic security agenda Obama outlined in his State of the Union address this month, which also included a call to expand unemployment benefits. "For Americans short of retirement, basic benefits should be just as mobile as everything else is today," Obama told Congress. "Even if he’s going from job to job, he should still be able to save for retirement and take his savings with him.”

The president will propose an as-yet-undisclosed amount of money to experiment with more portable retirement plans, run by states and non-profits, which would accommodate workers who move from job to job or who have more than one employer at a time.

The National Institute on Retirement Security found last year that the median retirement account balance for all working-age Americans is $2,500 — a number that increases to just $14,500. for those nearing retirement. Many of them just need to get started, said the institute's executive director, Diane Oakley. "What I like about this proposal is it still tries to provide some important incentives for employers to take the next step," she said.

Obama's proposals would require action by a Republican-controlled Congress in an election year session, but Obama has expressed optimism he can still work with Congress on the issue.

In fact, the election could help force Congress to get something done this year. "America's middle class is feeling economically insecure," said Christian Weller, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston and author of Retirement on the Rocks. "Economic anxiety is driving a lot of the support for Donald Trump, and also for Bernie Sanders."

Weller said the Obama proposal's "soft mandate" for employers to give employees an IRA option is a significant change to the voluntary, employer-based system of retirement savings. "If you're an employer who's not doing anything, you at least have to maker it easier for an employee to save on their own through a payroll deduction option," he said.

The Republican chairmen of the tax-writing committees of Congress, which have jurisdiction over retirement plans, had no comment on the proposals Tuesday. But they've been working on their own proposals, and the Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing Thursday on the issue.

"These items shouldn't be particularly controversial," Labor Secretary Tom Perez told reporters Monday. "In fact a lot of these ideas enjoy bipartisan support and have bipartisan roots." Auto-enrolling employees in a retirement plan, for example, has been proposed for years by both the conservative Heritage Foundation and the center-left Brookings Institution.

Perez said many small businesses worry that the administrative and compliance burdens are too costly for them to offer a retirement plan — obstacles that the administration's proposals try to address.

"What we're trying to do is recognize those barriers and address them," he said. "We want to increase access, we want to reduce burdens, but at the same time we want to make sure there are sufficient consumer protections in place."