Teresa Ghilarducci has always had more interesting and controversial things to say than your average retirement-policy wonk. An economist who moved this year from the University of Notre Dame to the New School for Social Research in New York City, she has railed for years against the decline of the traditional pension. She recently wrote a book subtitled The Plot Against Pensions and the Plan to Save Them ; the less contentious main title is When I'm Sixty-Four .
Still, as she sat at the witness table on Oct. 7 at a hearing of the House Committee on...