The US Congress on Wednesday passed a law limiting responsible investments in pension funds, which should lead President Joe Biden to use his right of veto for the first time.
Republicans are against the idea of ??taking environmental, social or governance criteria into account in financial decisions. They believe that this is an ideological posture.
In Congress, they took aim at a measure put in place by the Department of Labor in January that facilitates such investments in US pension funds.
Republican Andy Barr, author of the law providing for the dismantling of this measure, considered that it “politicized the pension funds of Americans, and put their pensions in danger”.
This law was approved Tuesday in the House, and adopted Wednesday in the Senate by 50 votes against 46. Several Democratic senators voted with the Republicans. Among them is West Virginia mining state senator Joe Manchin, already known for torpedoing many of Joe Biden’s climate and social ambitions.
First veto of the Biden presidency
The President of the United States is determined to block an “unacceptable” text, according to his spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre. “He will veto this law if it gets on his desk,” she warned Wednesday ahead of the Senate vote. This will be the first veto of the Biden presidency.
This text has also been widely criticized by environmental organizations. “Preventing people from taking into account the financial risks associated with climate change, the effects of which they are already feeling, will only serve to damage their savings,” denounced one of them, the Sierra Club, in a communicated.
This text is the latest example of extremely bitter cultural debates, dividing the United States on issues of gender, sexual orientation or climate.
In August 2022, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a rising star of the hard right and slayer of “wokism”, had already ordered the bankers managing his state’s pension funds not to take these criteria into account. He urged people to “prioritize the financial security of residents, over fanciful notions of a utopian future.”
