Biden signs Social Security Fairness Act into law
- The legislation repeals the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset — two longstanding provisions of Social Security that reduce or eliminate benefits for certain government retirees, including Civil Service Retirement System annuitants, as well as teachers, firefighters, police officers and others who have worked in a public sector position.
“The bill I’m signing today is about a simple proposition: Americans who have worked hard all their lives to earn an honest living should be able to retire with economic security and dignity,” Biden said at a bill signing ceremony held Sunday at the White House. “The law that existed denied millions of Americans access to the full Social Security benefits they earned by thousands of dollars a year.”
WEP reduces Social Security payments for anyone who receives an annuity from their time spent working in government, but who also worked in a Social Security-covered job. The provision impacts roughly 2 million individuals, including federal retirees in CSRS.
Though it’s been reintroduced in Congress for decades, the Social Security Fairness Act gained significant momentum in just the last year. The legislation cleared the House in November after Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and Garret Graves (R-La.) filed a discharge petition and successfully pushed the bill to a floor vote. The Senate followed suit several weeks later and passed the bill in late December.
Proponents of the legislation, including the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, have said removing WEP and GPO will bring equality to millions of public servants in their retirement benefits.
“With the repeal of WEP and GPO, federal retirees, along with so many others, will finally receive the full Social Security benefits they’ve earned,” NARFE National President William Shackelford said in a statement Sunday. “NARFE is proud to have played a part in achieving this monumental victory, and we remain committed to ensuring that public service is met with the respect and fairness it deserves.”
At the same time, critics of the bill have warned that repealing WEP and GPO could shorten the timeline until Social Security reaches insolvency. Some had instead pushed for reforming WEP and GPO rather than fully repealing the two provisions.
CBO also estimated that eliminating WEP will increase monthly Social Security payments of impacted individuals by $360, on average, by December 2025. Eliminating GPO will increase monthly payments by $700 for impacted spouses, and $1,190 for impacted surviving spouses, on average, by December 2025. The monthly payments will increase over time due to annual cost-of-living adjustments.
After Biden signed the bill into law, the Social Security Administration is expected to soon publish more details about the law’s implementation on its website. The payments to impacted individuals are expected to be backdated to January 2024.
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