The US Senate passed the Social Security Fairness Act (SSFA) over the weekend, sending the bill that will expand Social Security benefits to millions of public-sector employees to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.
The bill reverses the windfall elimination provision (WEP) and the government pension offset (GPO), two policies that significantly decrease the amount of money received from Social Security by public employees who also earned a municipal pension.
The WEP reduces benefits for retired or disabled workers who have fewer than 30 years of significant earnings from employment covered by Social Security if they also receive pensions on the basis of noncovered employment. The GPO reduces the spousal or surviving spousal benefits of people who receive pensions on the basis of noncovered employment.
The laws have been on the books for decades impacting the retirement earnings of police officers, teachers, firefighters, and other public sector employees.
The Senate passed the SSFA on a 76-20 vote, with Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy joining a bipartisan coalition of supporters. This follows last month’s House passage of the bill by an overwhelming bipartisan margin of 327 to 75. The bill now heads to President Biden, who is expected to sign it into law.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, celebrated the bill’s passage.
“Today, justice was finally done for the millions of American workers who dedicated their lives to serving the public but had their retirements throttled by a punitive and unnecessary loophole. The Senate joined the House and delivered on its promise to pass the Social Security Fairness Act so that every public employee can retire with dignity and grace,” Weingarten said in a statement. “This bill had wide bipartisan support from lawmakers and their constituents for one simple reason: It’s about basic fairness. President Biden, from the start of his administration, has acted decisively on retirement security and we hope he will sign the bill quickly.”
Weingarten said everyone knows a teacher, firefighter, police officer, nurse, or public worker of some kind who has paid into Social Security year after year, only to have their payments curbed by the WEP and GPO when they retire.
“Now, that penalty will be consigned to the dustbin of history, where it belongs,” she added. “Ensuring a fair and secure retirement is how we respect the workers who uplift our communities. And it’s how we recruit and retain the next generation to help our country thrive.”
The Connecticut Education Association lobbied for the passage of the bill. Several members of the CEA traveled to Washington two weeks ago to directly appeal to lawmakers.
“The repeal of WEP/GPO would not have been possible without the collective power of members in unions across the country and the support of a bipartisan group of congresspeople who understand the importance of repealing this law,” said CEA Vice President Joslyn DeLancey.
In a phone interview, CEA President Kate Dias said that the passage of the SSFA not only would allow teachers and other municipal workers to retire with better benefits, but that by eliminating the Social Security penalties, the field of educators could grow.
“To be perfectly honest, [the SSFA] also allows us to recruit people as second career educators,” she said. “These penalties really made it undesirable for somebody who had worked in business and industry to become an educator as a second career because they would have to take on these penalties and see a reduction or potential elimination of their Social Security. So now we can invite people from other careers into the teaching profession, and we’re quite frankly ecstatic about the repeal of these penalties.”
She responded to critics who pointed to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, which stated that passage of the SSFA will have a large impact on the solvency of Social Security. The additional benefits paid out as a result of passage of the bill will cost $190 billion over the next 10 years, and will lead to the exhaustion of the Social Security trust fund roughly six months earlier than currently projected.
“To those individuals, I would say the problem that exists needs to be solved regardless of how we treat our public servants,” Dias said. “I would also say that we have tried to balance Social Security on the backs of municipal workers for too long. We’re not asking for benefits that we haven’t paid in. We’re asking for the same benefits as anyone else that has paid in. So in that regard, what we’re currently doing is just taxing municipal employees to balance Social Security for an extra six months, which I would argue is an absolutely inappropriate budgeting mechanism.”
Dias said that the next legislative priority for the CEA at the federal level is to help protect Social Security and ensure that it is fully funded. She said that she is ready to work with Congressman John Larson, who has proposed changes to Social Security to keep it solvent in his Social Security 2100 Act. Currently, the Social Security Trust Fund is funded enough to pay 100% of benefits through 2033. After that, benefits would have to be cut or other dramatic changes to the Social Security program would need to be made.
At the state level, Dias said the CEA will be focused on elevating the teaching profession in Connecticut, including measures to diversify the workforce, shore up special education and improve teacher pay.
“We’re really focusing on teacher salary,” she said. “One of the reasons we’re in this conundrum [regarding Social Security benefits] is that teachers must work a second job, and that’s because of the salary level. And so really, we do need to talk about elevating the teaching profession through compensation.”