There is a new bill that was passed by the House of Representatives that will raise Social Security benefits for public servants who were limited in how much they could get before.
House Resolution 82, the Social Security Fairness Act, was passed with 327 votes in favor and 76 against. There were 191 Democrats and 136 Republicans voting for it. It was expected that the bill would pass because it had support from both parties and even the Speaker of the House backed it.
The Social Security Fairness Act
Rep. Garret Graves (R-Louisiana) and Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia) introduced and backed the bill, which would get rid of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO) for federal workers.
If someone gets both Social Security and a government pension from a job that isn’t covered by Social Security, the WEP cuts their benefits. The GPO cuts a spouse’s Social Security benefits by two-thirds of the worker’s pension.
Because these two rules were in effect at the same time, 2.8 million public service workers, such as teachers, police officers, and others in government, would not have been able to get larger Social Security payments when they retired than they are entitled to.
This would have left them struggling financially, even though they had worked hard and earned the credits needed to support their claim. They will now be able to get this money because the rules were thrown out.
In a joint statement about the importance of the bill, Graves and Spanberger said, “By passing the Social Security Fairness Act, a bipartisan majority of the U.S. House of Representatives showed up for the millions of Americans—police officers, teachers, firefighters, and other local and state public servants—who worked a second job to make ends meet or started a second career to support their families after retiring from public service.”
A majority of both parties in the U.S. House voted to give hundreds of thousands of spouses, widows, and widowers who are denied their spouses’ Social Security benefits because they chose careers in service a safe way to retire.
Even though the repeal of the WEP and the GPO was supported by many, The Club for Growth, a conservative-leaning organization, asked lawmakers to vote against the bill because it would cause the government deficit to grow.
“These two provisions are meant to protect the integrity of the Social Security system that so many seniors depend on by making sure that people and their spouses who worked in jobs that did not contribute to the Old Age and Survivor’s Insurance Trust Fund and receive pensions from those jobs do not threaten the solvency of Social Security,” the group said in a statement.
The interesting thing about this is that people who are eligible for Social Security benefits had to work a job that allowed them to pay into the system every month in order to get benefits. When the pension system was stronger, these rules stopped people from double-dipping.
But now that pensions are lower and the cost of living is higher, forcing many people to get a second job to make ends meet, it is only fair to let them get the benefits they are entitled to.
The Congressional Budget Office says that if the bill is passed, it will add $195.6 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. This is one of the main concerns of conservative groups.
However, the cost could be easily covered by the savings in public benefits that will not be paid out when these people have a living wage pension. Now the bill needs to be passed by the Senate and signed into law.
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