00:00On Ms. Hayes from Connecticut for her five minutes of questioning.
00:05Thank you, and thank you to the witnesses for testifying today.
00:09The work of EPSA is critical to protecting the health and retirement security of more than 156 million workers, retirees, and their families.
00:17At its core, EPSA provides protection, education, and oversight of retirement, health care, and other employee benefit plans.
00:24In FY24, EPSA benefit advisors help recover more than 540 million in health and retirement benefits owed to workers and their families after closing almost 200,000 inquiries.
00:39The 2024 figures represent an increase in inquiries and money recovered by EPSA compared to previous years, illustrating the importance of benefit advisors for workers and retirees.
00:50The benefit advisors who work from the regional field office in Boston are invaluable to assisting constituents in my district in Connecticut.
00:58In a recent case, benefit advisors assisted a Connecticut retiree in assessing $2 million in retirement benefits from a former employer.
01:08Despite the tremendous return on investment, the Trump administration is proposing to cut the budget of EPSA by $10 million in FY26 and has laid off probationary and other employees through DOGE.
01:19As mentioned in the testimony by Mr. Cowher, the Trump administration recognizes the impacts of its proposed cuts to EPSA, providing lower enforcement targets in the 2026 annual performance plan to, quote, reflect anticipated reductions in staffing, end quote.
01:36Today, my Republican colleagues are discussing bills that focus on the ability of EPSA to conduct enforcement while ignoring the resources and staffing cuts that are the main barrier to completing those investigations.
01:47Mr. Cowher, can you share how the proposed budget cuts by the Trump administration would impact the services and work provided by EPSA benefit advisors?
01:59Thank you for your question.
02:01The benefits advisors are truly amazing individuals.
02:04They are very highly trained.
02:06You can call them on a variety of topics, anything that's covered by ERISA, and they will do their best to answer you.
02:11And the number of benefit advisors that the agency has has already shrunk and is going to continue to shrink.
02:19The volume of calls that they receive is not going to shrink.
02:24And so that's going to just mean delays.
02:26It's going to mean unanswered calls.
02:28It's going to mean that an agency that took pride that we would get letters where constituents remarked, I thought I was going to be calling the DMV, and I never imagined a government agency would be responsive like this.
02:41They are now going to get DMV-level service.
02:43No offense to anyone that works in the DMV.
02:45I think that leads me to my next question, because I want to discuss the additional strain that may be placed on benefit advisors if Congress does not act to extend the Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies before they expire at the end of the year, throwing the health care marketplace into chaos.
03:02Among its many important responsibilities, EPSA oversees more than 500,000 benefit plans through the Affordable Care Act and other legislation.
03:10Due to staffing and funding cuts, I'm worried there may not be benefit advisors available to answer phones in regional field offices when people lose their ACA coverage and are looking for help to navigate the options available through their employer.
03:25Do you anticipate any – Mr. Cowher, again for you – do you anticipate any increase in demand for the services of EPSA benefit advisors to help employees navigate health care plans if Congress does not extend ACA subsidies?
03:39Yes, absolutely.
03:40I mean, it's pretty simple.
03:42If your health care coverage is more expensive, then you're going to look at other options.
03:46That is absolutely going to mean that people are looking at their employer plans, they're thinking about these questions during open enrollment, they're contacting benefit advisors.
03:56One of the ways in which in, I would say, a normal budget environment, EPSA might manage that is by conducting more outreach, going out into communities and doing events to kind of proactively educate people
04:09so that you don't get the calls on the back end.
04:10I don't know what the status is of those, but I would imagine that is one of the areas that will face pretty significant cuts because if you can't afford people to just answer the phone, sending them out into communities and doing educational events on whether it's the ESOP-related stuff or health-related stuff, it's hard to find the money for that.
04:29A normal budget environment, what a novel concept.
04:33I yield back.
04:34A gentlelady.
04:37A gentlelady.
04:38A gentlelady.
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