Pick up any newspaper. Open any magazine. What do you see? Articles about retirement. Why? Because 77 million baby boomers have retirement on their minds.

Congress, by contrast, has done little to acknowledge that. As the baby boomers get ready to retire, our public policies are not prepared.

• Companies are cutting back on heath benefits for retirees. If they try to buy insurance on their own, they get no tax relief. If they work part time to pay the premiums, they face some of the highest marginal tax rates in the federal tax code!
• Employers are abandoning traditional pension plans. Workers who have access to 401(k)s aren't contributing enough and are investing the wrong way.

These problems can be remedied — with bipartisan consensus — through 10 important steps . Our health and pension experts will outline what Congress can do to prepare the country for the baby boomers' retirements. Among them:

• Allowing employers to help early retirees purchase individual health insurance with pretax dollars.
• Giving tax relief to early retirees (and younger spouses if seniors on Medicare) who purchase their own health insurance.
• Eliminating the high marginal tax rate created by the Social Security benefits tax.
• Eliminating the Social Security earnings penalty for early retirees.
• Expanding access to the Roth approach to retirement savings.
• Reforming 401(k)s to create higher returns and safe returns.
• Creating tax fairness for stay-at-home spouses who need to accumulate retirement savings.