At a time when the nation's legislative wheels seem mired in partisanship, the last week of January turned out to be a busy one for retirement plan proposals.

First the president unveiled his MyRA concept in the State of the Union (along with a reference to an automatic IRA proposal previously included in the White House's annual budget), followed a day later by introduction of the Retirement Security Act of 2014, a bipartisan proposal by Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Susan Collins (R-ME). A day after that, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, formally introduced the Universal, Secure, and Adaptable (USA) Retirement Funds Act of 2014, an updated version of his 2012 proposal.

All three were intended to expand and improve the retirement savings of Americans — although, as you might expect, the three take quite different approaches. Consider that the myRA calls for the development of a "new retirement savings security" to encourage savings in a kind of Roth IRA, while Sen. Harkin's proposal would require employers above a certain size to offer a whole new type of retirement savings plan (and would impose some new threshold enrollment and withdrawal requirements on existing 401(k)s, as well). As for the Nelson/Collins proposal, it seems to be largely focused on lowering or removing certain current regulatory and administrative barriers to smaller employers offering retirement plans.