Examining the impact of Obama’s plans by Kathleen Pender, San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, January 26, 2010.

The White House on Monday previewed several middle-class tax cuts and spending programs that President Obama will propose in Wednesday’s State of the Union address.

Proposals include:

• Improve 401(k) plans by requiring better fee disclosure, encouraging employers to make unbiased investment advice available to workers, promoting annuities and other forms of guaranteed lifetime income and requiring better disclosure of target-date funds.

Better fee disclosure “is something that is coming. The Obama administration is trying to push it along a little faster,” says Jon Chambers, a retirement plan adviser with Schultz Collins Lawson Chambers. Providing investment advice “is a battle that has been going on for over a decade and (appears to be) at a stalemate.”

Chambers believes the Securities and Exchange Commission will require better disclosure of target-date funds.

Encouraging annuities reflects the fact that 401(k) plans are replacing traditional pension plans as a primary retirement vehicle, he adds. The question is, “how do you turn a 401(k) plan, which is really a savings accumulation vehicle, into a retirement income vehicle?”