How to get good financial advice?  The US Department of Labor and the Securities and Exchange Commission disagree.

Staffers at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Labor Department clashed over a controversial plan to curb potential conflicts of interest among brokers who give retirement advice, Senate panel Republicans said in a report on Wednesday.

The Labor Department, which regulates retirement plan advice, rejected numerous recommendations from the SEC and other agencies.

The Labor Department’s plan has been in play for more than five years. On Jan. 29, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget said it had received the department’s final proposed rule. The White House does not have an exact time frame for implementing the rule.

Under the plan, brokers would have to act in clients’ best interests, or as “fiduciaries,” when advising about IRAs. Brokers now must recommend investments that are “suitable,” based on factors such as investors’ ages.

Many Republicans and some Democrats oppose the plan, saying it would drive up customers’ costs and curb commissions.

Part of the Senate panel’s report focused on July 31, 2012 emails between Labor Department economist Keith Bergstresser and SEC economist Matthew Kozora. They discussed types of improper broker activity that the rule should measure: conflicts of interest or impact on investment returns.

“I hate to break it to you, but you’re wrong,” Bergstresser wrote to Kozora, according to the report. “People do not respond to fees or any other costs, but they do chase returns.”

“You keep circling back to the same statements, many or which are unsupported conjectures on your part,” Bergstresser later wrote to Kozora. “If you have nothing new to bring up, please stop emailing me about this topic,” Bergstresser wrote.

“I am also now utterly confused as to what the purpose of the proposed DOL rule is then, if not to limit advisor conflicts when providing retirement advice,” Kozora later wrote.