Congress is set to vote on a bill that would increase Social Security benefits for some Americans if it’s passed.
Next month, U.S. House of Representatives Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat, and Garret Graves, a Louisiana Republican, will be filing a petition to force a vote on the Social Security Fairness Act, which would eliminate the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO).
The WEP and GPO lower Social Security for millions of Americans. While the bill currently has 325 cosponsors, it only needs 218 signatures to force a vote on the House floor.
“For more than 40 years, millions of Americans—police officers, teachers, firefighters, and other local and state public servants—have been stripped of their Social Security benefits as an unjust penalty for devoting much of their careers to serving their communities and fellow Americans. These Virginians, Louisianans, and Americans across our country deserve their full retirement benefits—just like every other American who has paid into Social Security,” Spanberger and Graves said in a joint statement.
They added: “For years, we have worked together to build bipartisan support for this effort and urge House Leadership to take real action to right this wrong. As those efforts have stalled, we are using every tool at our disposal to finally get this done.”
Spanberger and Graves said that the Social Security Fairness Act could remove unjust penalties on public servant workers.
The WEP, in particular, lowers the amount of earned Social Security benefits if the recipient also receives a public pension by a job uncovered by Social Security. Teachers who work in public schools, but also have part time jobs, see their benefits lowered under this rule.
The GPO, meanwhile, sees the spousal benefits for those who work as government employees reduced if the job is also uncovered by Social Security. That means their benefits can be reduced by two-thirds for surviving spouses who also collect a government pension.
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“Those receiving Social Security benefits are at the forefront of many new bills and proposals and with good reason,” Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek. “There are plenty of potential revisions that could greatly assist individuals and families who could be receiving increased funding in a time when most of them desperately need it. This bill looks to reform WEP and GPO, two features that reduce Social Security benefits for some state and federal employees in different jobs in various states.”
Altogether, the WEP and GPO reduce benefits for roughly 2.8 million Social Security recipients.
For those beneficiaries, Beene said the law would be a “game changer.”
“In these times where every dollar counts, a boost to Social Security benefits would be an extra layer of financial security many are doing without all because of a decades-old procedure,” he said.
Social Security’s funding has long been predicted to be in jeopardy, with the most recent Trustees report finding the government would run out of money for full payments by 2033.
“Social Security will, if Congress doesn’t act, face a 17 percent benefit shortfall for all of our beneficiaries currently in payment status. The good news is this is a solvable problem,” Social Security commissioner Martin O’Malley previously said.