The House passed the Social Security Fairness Act Tuesday evening by a vote of 327 to 75, putting the repeal of the windfall and state pension offset requirement closer to reality than ever before.
Social Security’s WEP and GPO have been around for decades. These two provisions reduce and, in some cases, reduce the Social Security benefits of Civil Service Retirement System retirees and other public employees who have worked in state and local governments, as well as their spouses, widows, and widowers.
The House vote came after Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) and Garrett Graves (R-PA), original sponsors of the reintroduced Social Security Fairness Act, filed a petition in September to try to push the bill toward passage of a Social Security Fairness Act. vote. After about a week, the petition reached the required 218 signatures to force the bill through the House.
The legislation “will provide a secure retirement for hundreds of thousands of spouses, widows and widowers who are denied their spouses’ Social Security benefits simply because they chose service jobs,” Spanberger and Graves said Tuesday in a joint statement.
During decades of advocacy to repeal the WEP and GPO, support for the legislation has continually grown. The House version of the Social Security Fairness Act gained 330 cosponsors this year, making it one of the most supported bills in the entire Congress.
The National Association of Active and Retired Federal Employees, which has been pushing for the bill’s passage for years, said the legislation had never gone this far before.
“The overwhelming bipartisan support for the Social Security Fairness Act underscores the urgent need for this legislation, and with continued advocacy and support, we can make the changes needed to protect the benefits of our nation’s retired public servants,” NARFE National President William Shackelford said in a statement.
Now the legislation faces the next hurdle: passage in the Senate. The Senate Companion to the Social Security Fairness Act currently has 62 cosponsors.
“We encourage Senate leadership to build on this clear momentum, bring our bipartisan efforts to a vote and provide Americans with the retirement security they deserve,” Spanberger and Graves said.
Unlike the House, the Senate has no procedure for filing an impeachment petition — the strategy Spanberger and Graves used to force a vote in the House.
“In the Senate, we have the votes to defeat the filibuster, but it must be put to a vote,” John Hutton, NARFE’s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs, told The Federal Drive with Tom Temin. “But someone might object to it going ahead, which could delay completion by two weeks or so.”
Federal groups, such as the Association of Federal Directors, are urging the Senate to consider the bill before the end of this Congress.
FMA National President Craig Carter said in a statement that the legislation “will provide this long-awaited relief to public employees affected by the GPO and WEP.” “It is time to relegate these rulings to the dustbin of history for the benefit of all civil servants who have been deprived of what they earned for too long.”
But at the same time, the Senate faces “must-pass” legislation this year, including the National Defense Authorization Act and 2025 appropriations legislation, that will likely take up a significant amount of lawmakers’ time and attention.
Hutton said the biggest challenge facing the Social Security Fairness Act is “convincing Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other senators that this is a priority that needs to be accomplished now.”
Some members of Congress have also considered alternatives to complete repeal of the WEP and GPO. Two other bills aim to change the calculation of benefits rather than repeal the two provisions entirely. Supporters of these bills raised concerns that a complete repeal would affect Social Security’s solvency, while reforming the account would ensure “fairness” between public and private sector workers.
If the Social Security Fairness Act is enacted, there will likely still be a lag period before it becomes effective for those affected by the WEP and GPO.
“It all turns into a process that Social Security can implement,” Hatton said. “But it is unclear how long implementation will take.”
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