Biden Signs the Social Security Fairness Act

 No more of those unfair offsets which amounted to outright theft of benefits, especially the misnamed "Windfall Elimination Provision."

I stand to get around $120 a month increase in my Social Security benefits.  

The White House moved up the signing ceremony a day because of other things going on in D.C., especially the state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter.

Repeal is now official.

Miracles Never Cease

 Today, the U.S. Senate invoked cloture on the Social Security Fairness Act with a vote of 73 to 27.  Tomorrow is the scheduled vote, and it is expected to pass and go to President Biden for his signature.

Repealing the Windfall Elimination Provision (the Government Pension Offset is also involved) will make a difference in my Social Security benefits.  The bill is retroactive to December of 2023, when this latest repeal was first proposed, so I should get around $1,400 in back pay.  I worked in Nevada public employment from 1999-2003, and then from 2005-2008.  Most of the former was in part-time work at a law library for Washoe County, while 2002-2003 was at a school district.  The last period was for a school district until I was let go in April of 2008.  My service credit for Nevada PERS was 5.04 years.  However, I did teach full time at a private school in northern Nevada, so I was still paying into Social Security, while at the same time working at the law library for PERS credit (and full health insurance benefits).  The years I worked and didn't pay into it were about 3 1/2 years total.  When I began to take my Nevada pension in 2011 at age 56, my original pension benefit was $300.41, which is fully taxable federally and in Oregon.  

In April of 2017, I started receiving Social Security benefits when I turned 62.  I had to do it, for this school district at the time employed me for less than 20 hours a week, no benefits but Oregon PERS and sick/personal leave.  I did work to about 29 hours a week, however, most years, because my principal then always made sure I got more hours.  That helped with the pension amount.  Three years ago (or four school years ago), I got moved to a school where I took a full-time, 35-hour-a-week classified (not certified) position, with full benefits, of which I am still employed today.  I get a fairly decent amount of income as long as I don't retire from the school district anytime soon.  Not nearly as much as I would have had I worked as a teacher (I probably would have made around $100,000 a year total if I had), but I can get by.  By the time I got Social Security, I had my benefit reduced by $119 a month because of the time I worked in Nevada public employment.  This left me under $800 a month total.  When Medicare Part B kicked in almost five years ago, my SS benefit was just $687 a month.  Having no more WEP will pay about 2/3rds of the Medicare Part B premium, and that will be a big help for me.

I am not alone.  There are some 2 1/2 million people  like me affected by the WEP.  We paid into Social Security, worked enough hours to get benefits, but got cheated out of the full amount under some ridiculous notion that because we worked in public employment, we have  "big pensions."  It sure isn't true in my case and many others.

Thanks to at least a decade's worth of work by public employees to persuade members of Congress to repeal these provisions, repeal has been a bipartisan effort.  This is the way Congress SHOULD be run and used to be run before the far right ruined public discourse and why this country is on the brink of disaster.

From a Facebook post by  outgoing Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who helped spearhead the repeal effort in this Congress:

U.S. Senator Sherrod BrownNational WEP & GPO Repeal Movement

All-star contributor

  · sontreSopd1hu0l53m261g2a448305hg24c7if00m2gu2a624135hca3f59u  · 

WE DID IT. Today 73 Senators voted to move forward on our Social Security Fairness Act and restore the Social Security benefits you’ve earned. This vote is proof that your advocacy has worked.

You’ve called our offices, you’ve written letters and emails, you’ve contacted your representatives on social media, and so much more. We’ve heard you, and we’re making this right.

I’ve helped lead the fight to repeal WEP and GPO for 10 years, and it was an honor to stand on the Senate floor this afternoon and watch as so many of my colleagues joined us to restore the Social Security of America’s police officers, firefighters, educators, and public servants. There are a few more steps until it’s final, but this is a victory worth celebrating. And I’ll keep working until we get it to the President’s desk.

Thank you for being in this fight. When you love this country, you fight for the people who make it work.

Update:  After midnight EST, on December 21st, repeal did pass the Senate after several proposed amendments were defeated.  The final vote was 76 to 20.

President Biden will sign it.

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Thursday Reads

 I ain't holding my breath, but it looks like the bill to repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision/Government Pension Offset will be put to a vote next week in the United States Senate.  It has already passed the House.  President Biden has indicated he will sign it if passed.

No, it won't speed up Social Security's "insolvency,"  because no federal program can be "insolvent."  It is a crock of shit peddled by right-wing liars backed by billionaires who own companies and who do not want to pay the employer's share of FICA.  It has always been about that.

I stand to gain about $120 a month if the WEP is repealed.  Think: I had something like one third of my tiny Nevada pension of then-$341 a month applied against my Social Security benefit.  Never mind I actually paid into the system and continue to pay into it.  

If passed and signed into law, it will be retroactive beginning December 2023.

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The UK has put an indefinite ban on puberty blockers for minors for "gender identity treatment."  I suspect the US will follow shortly if the USSC rules in favor of states banning it.

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Some Tuesday Reads

 In what could be good news for yours truly, the House passed the Social Security Fairness Act, thanks to a procedural maneuver to bypass the Ways and Means committee and put it up to a vote by the entire House.

The Senate has its identical version of the House bill.  It has 62 co-sponsors.   If it passes Congress, President Biden will sign it into law.

I would get an extra $120 a month on my Social Security benefit.  Let's just hope Trump and company don't pull shit with the Third Rail.

The House vote was overwhelming for repeal: 327 to 75.  The  Senate will likely do the same and then Biden will sign it into law.

I think there may be issues with the GPO because of the dual entitlement rule, but repeal of the WEP is long overdue.

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It goes without saying that nobody owes you  grandkids.   Time to develop real interests.

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A Few Monday Reads

In Louisiana today, there was a House hearing on the WEP and GPO, offsets that screw over many public employees in states that are affected by those offsets.  Here is the video of the hearing:

House Speaker Mike Johnson may be sympathetic to the plight of public employees affected by the offsets; after all, he represents one of the states affected, Louisiana.

Statement from the Fraternal Order of Police is here.

Repeal of the WEP would affect me tremendously.  I have a tiny pension from Nevada, yet I had 120 bucks taken off my Social Security check for the simple reason I didn't pay into it during the time I was a teacher there (about four years, with an additional year in other public sector work although I was paying into Social Security through a private school job).  

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The women protesters in Portland, Oregon, are lucky to be alive after an altercation with so-called "woke" thugs.

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Probably Won't Change in the Near Term

As far as I am concerned, the Windfall Elimination Provision is extremely outdated, for most workers today do not work in one job or career for 30 years.

It made assumptions that simply weren't true then and are less true now.

I don't think states that don't pay into Social Security are going to start paying into the system, however. The people who have or are posed to have generous pensions are not about to give those up.

However, that is an issue separate from the totally confiscatory WEP.

Not that it is going anywhere this session or in the near future, but here is a total repeal of WEP floating around in the House.

Mentioned in the first link is this good report about how teachers are screwed over on pensions and Social Security.

This article is also good and demonstrates how teachers are screwed over on pensions, especially since Congress allowed for longer vesting periods for state pensions than for those in the private sector. I am lucky I got vested in Nevada after five years, and I will also be vested in Oregon after five years, assuming I don't get sacked up here:

The safe harbor formula is easy to execute—bureaucrats need to look at only a few basic details about the plan—but doing so ignores some important variables. First, the safe harbor rules specifically carve out an exception for states to employ “vesting periods” that impose minimum requirements on the number of years an employee must work
before becoming eligible for pension benefits.8 With no constraints on vesting requirements, states can and do set vesting periods that are longer than what
would be required in the private sector. For example, non-Social Security states like Connecticut, Illinois, Georgia, and Massachusetts withhold all employer provided
retirement benefits from teachers until they have reached 10 years of service. (Social Security imposes its own requirement that workers contribute at least 10 years to qualify for some benefit. This works like a vesting requirement, except, unlike a vesting period in a single retirement plan, Social Security is not tied to a specific employer or state and more than 95 percent of jobs are covered by Social Security. The main exception is state and local government workers, including teachers in the 15 states without coverage.9
) These long vesting periods would be illegal in the private sector, where federal law requires all employees to vest within seven years.

In the 15 states that do not offer Social Security coverage to their teachers, an average of 52 percent of new teachers will fail to vest into their state retirement system, leaving them with no retirement benefit at all.10 The safe harbor provision specifically allows this.

I believe it is actually five years in the private sector for vesting. However, given how easily administrators fuck over teachers, I am surprised more teachers don't even vest in their pensions.

I am really lucky although my pensions will be dinky because I didn't work 30 years in one agency.

HR 711 Hearing

Hearing on the repeal of WEP for future retirees and make adjustments for those already getting the offset:




Social Security Advisory Board report from last October.

If this thing passes, I hope it doesn't screw me over more than the WEP would be now.

I Am Trying to Translate the Proposed HR 711

The GPO is a completely separate statute and should not be used to hijack this current proposed legislation. The GPO passed years before--five years before--the WEP. I think it is much more problematic than WEP and potentially a lot more expensive to change. From what I can make out with HR711, once I can get past all of the poorly written legalese, it DOES repeal WEP in terms of new people going into the SS system starting next year. Their SS will be based solely on their SS earnings--there is NO "offset" or theft of benefits based on some notion that because you have a state pension that doesn't pay into SS, you have a "huge" pension and don't need SS. It will be calculated the same as everybody else who is eligible for SS benefits. What they will get if the law passes should be similar to what their SS statements say they will get. Those currently affected will get a partial "rebate" of the offset. WEP was written decades ago, when many people in both public and private sector worked for a single employer for decades. It hasn't been true for years in private sector employment, and it is increasingly not true in public.

I was initially skeptical of this legislation, but given how many public sector organizations are backing this and how closely they have worked with Congress with this for the past two years, it appears it will help people as long as it makes clear that this doesn't change matters for people with 30 years in SS or people not vested in a public pension (NEA's concerns). From what I can tell from the bill, those issues are addressed implicitly but not explicitly; in other words, those people won't be affected.

NEA, in its website, still makes the assumption that WEP affects mostly teachers, and that is not true--it affects all public sector employees in the states and local governments that don't pay into Social Security. It also assumes that WEP affects teachers when they moonlight in part time jobs or summer jobs, when that is totally nonsense. Most are not going to get the forty quarters required to qualify for SS from doing scattershot jobs. It affects teachers who go into the field in mid-career, just as it affects other public employees like police and fire personnel who often retire early and go into private sector work.

The hearings should not even cover GPO because it is a separate regulation. I think to include it in the legislation would lessen the chances this proposal passes Congress. We are lucky Congress will even HEAR this proposal.

According to AARP, this is what the bill does in a nutshell:

For workers who retire after January 1, 2017, at age 62 or older, all of their Social
Security earnings will be counted without any reduction, which will result in an
average benefit increase of $200 a month;

For workers who already have retired, the SSA will re-calculate benefits, and
according to SSA, benefits may increase an average of about $100 a month;
and

SSA will begin data matching Social Security and state and local pension
databases to ensure accurate benefit calculations, beginning in 2017.

link

Information on the HR 711 Hearing

The link is here.

It will be livestreamed this Tuesday. I have the week off this coming week, so I will try and remember to watch it.

More about it is here.

I Will Try to Remember to Watch That Congressional Hearing on HR 711

I was mad as hell it wasn't an outright repeal of WEP, but it appears I would not be affected by WEP if this legislation passes the current Congress.

This is the first time in some 30 years a proposal to deal with this offset problem has even had a hearing. The hearing will take place this Tuesday at 7 a.m. PDT.

Hopefully with the bi-partisan support something is finally done with this stupid law.

It was enacted during the Reagan years in a cynical attempt to show the public that people who have public pensions who don't pay into Social Security don't need them because they have these "huge" pensions. Yeah, like $318 a month like yours truly that would screw me out of $110 of my SS benefit when I have to take it next year is huge.

That was for working for a total of just over five years in Nevada. Not 25 years, not 30 years, not 35 years, but a mere five years in public employment.

According to the Brady proposal, people who currently have offsets will have their benefits recalculated; for those of us who will get SS after January 1, 2017, we will not be affected by offsets at all anymore. All Social Security payments will count without any reductions.

AARP finally came out with backing this proposal:

The Equal Treatment for Public Servants Act establishes a better rule to make it easier
for individuals and the SSA to determine and receive their earned Social Security
benefits. Under the bill:

 For workers who retire after January 1, 2017, at age 62 or older, all of their Social
Security earnings will be counted without any reduction, which will result in an
average benefit increase of $200 a month;

 For workers who already have retired, the SSA will re-calculate benefits, and
according to SSA, benefits may increase an average of about $100 a month;
and

 SSA will begin data matching Social Security and state and local pension
databases to ensure accurate benefit calculations, beginning in 2017.

Congress apparently hasn't been sitting on its ass like it usually does. Of course it helps it is an election year:

In addition to the hearing, a great deal of work has taken place behind the scenes over the past two years to build support for the bill’s eventual passage. The first major step was the assembly of a true national coalition of impacted states, followed by the recruitment of Brady and Neal as the lead Republican and Democrat sponsors.

Next was the work done by the Social Security Administration to help formulate the structure of the new benefit, as well as identify a funding source. Social Security, as well as the Obama Administration, have since certified the proposal contained within H.R. 711 as cost neutral.

In recent months, Mass Retirees and the Retired Texas Teachers have led the national effort to gain support for the proposal among the various interest groups. This effort paid-off just last week with the announcement of support for H.R. 711 by the AARP.

“Assuming the hearing goes well and we continue to build momentum, the next step will be the “mark up” of H.R. 711 to be favorably released from the Social Security Committee and brought to the House floor for a vote. Ideally, this will happen before the Congressional summer recess,” explains Duhamel. “From there the proposal goes to the US Senate. Thankfully, all indications are that if we get the bill to President Obama he will sign it into law. But there is a lot of work that remains to be done between now and then if we are to be successful in 2016.”

We will see what happens.

Hearing on WEP Next Week

I guess having some kind of hearing on the "Windfall Elimination Provision" affecting millions of public sector workers including yours truly is a step in the right direction, but since a Republican is sponsoring this "recalculation" of SS benefits in order to be more fair to people affected by WEP, I don't trust it as far as I can throw it.

I think more people could be screwed than before. After all, the GOP has always been in the forefront to cut SS benefits, so I am not buying this legislation.

Nothing but outright repeal of WEP (and GPO) is acceptable.

Currently, the WEP reduces the Social Security benefits of 1.3 million people who also receive public pensions from work not covered by Social Security—for example, educators and other dedicated public servants who must take part-time or summer jobs to make ends meet. H.R.711 would replace the WEP with a new “public service fairness formula” for people who turn 62 during or after 2017. Under this formula, the Social Security Administration would take into account the years a public sector employee paid into Social Security versus the years that employee paid into a public pension system while working in a position not covered by Social Security. Under H.R. 711, Social Security benefits would be calculated as if all the worker’s earnings were subject to Social Security taxes. This amount would then be multiplied by the percent of earnings covered by Social Security, thus taking into account that Social Security benefits are based on Social Security wages.

Call me skeptical of anything coming out of Congress.

WEP Is One of the Reasons I Will NEVER Be Able To Retire

Lots of luck getting this idiot Congress to EVER repeal those ruinous offsets.

It does not matter how small your state pension is if you are in a state or work for an agency that does not pay into Social Security:

Most people rely on the statements that the Social Security Administration publishes every year estimating your future retirement benefits. DO NOT DO THAT. If you get a public pension, no matter how small, your Social Security benefit earned from other work can be reduced by an amount up to half the amount of your public pension! This has a huge effect on multi-career people! Most people lose $400 or more a month, but the amount can be much more.

I will lose up to $150 a month in Social Security because I was covered a mere five years in Nevada PERS. I won't have much more than 1K in SS and PERS combined when I am forced to take SS at age 62 in about a year and a half because I am not working full time. I will get less SS than my sister does who got her first husband's benefit, and I had to work all my life and cannot get a spousal benefit. The offset will be likely around $100 if I calculated my SS benefit right because I have more than 20 years in "substantial earnings." That "substantial earnings" is what kills people who are in education. I am working now, but because it is part time, SS doesn't recognize it. Even if I were a full-time classified employee for the duration of the school year, it STILL doesn't count because the yearly income is under 21K.

Those offsets are designed to screw over lower-paid public employees in general and education personnel in particular.

An online petition, one of those that is always ignored by elected officials, is here. Note the number of signers.

Even if there were a million signatures, the idiots in Congress would ignore it.

I Will Believe Repeal of the Odious WEP/GPO When I See It

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, one of those rare people who is actually a Democrat, yesterday introduced legislation that would repeal the legalized theft of Social Security benefits called the WEP/GPO. The number of the bill is Senate Bill S.1651.

Of course I will believe repeal when I see it. Many federal politicians give this thing lip service, but nothing ever gets beyond committee. It needs to get out of there and onto the Senate floor.

I know our Congress doesn't do shit by design, unless it passes something like TPP designed to screw the rest of us over, but at least they could get off their asses and repeal this shit.

They could raise the cap to offset the offsets if money is a problem, but instead these louts prefer to keep things the way they are.

As I mentioned before about this issue, these offsets were put in back in the era when people did work for one company for thirty years, and many public employees spent thirty years or more in public employment. That is why there is the "30-year" rule on "substantial earnings" to be exempt from the offsets. This is no longer true in either public or private employment, and these offsets absolutely force people, especially women, into poverty.

The public employees who do receive big pensions are typically those who don't qualify for SS in the first place because they don't have the 40 quarters to be eligible.

I will be lucky if I get 1k a month in both SS and a pension when I have to collect SS when I turn 62 a year-and-a-half from now. I am in classified work--part-time work--which means I can NEVER make "substantial earnings" that would count toward the 30 years that would make me exempt from the heinous WEP. I have about 24 years right now, but who knows what SS comes up with when I apply?

Republicans Heller (NV), Murkowski (AK), and Collins (ME), all from states affected by these offsets, have co-sponsored this legislation. Another Republican, Vitter from Louisiana, has also co-sponsored the repeal.

It's a good show, but I think idiot Orren Hatch is in charge of the Finance Committee, where these repeals always get buried.

A similar bill has been introduced in the House. It is called HR 973.

Good Question

Saw this in the comments at the Social Security Fairness website:

Will Mr. Obama be able to use his EXECUTIVE ORDER rights to REPEAL WEP & GPO, or, is the Ways & Means Committee the only body in our government authorized to do so?

You can bet your ass nothing will be done in D.C. In the past thirty years, they have passed only two pieces of major legislation that have actually helped people (other than safety net funding for programs that were already in place): the Family Medical Leave Act (violated routinely by school districts) and the Americans With Disabilities Act. That's it.

Don't count on them repealing the hideous WEP/GPO. Right now, the movement is to demonize public employees, both workers and the retired, and to bitch about their "huge" pensions in an effort to pilfer the state treasuries to enrich Wall Street gangsters.

This person's story is typical of those who get the WEP/GPO shaft:

I worked as an elementary teacher for 15 years before taking an early retirement package offered by my district I was 57 and was needed at home for family health problems.I continued to work part time for adult ed pay teaching intervention classes, eventually teaching full time. I worked until I was 78. At 65 I applied for social security spousal benefits —-denied—– because I had the fantastic retirement income of $700 mo.!!! That would be ” double dipping” !!! I am 80 now and if anything happens to my husband I am not entitled to survivor benefits which all my friends get whether they worked or not , as long as they did not work in the “much revered” profession of teaching the future citizens of the world!!!! This WEP/GPO is the most unfair, discriminatory piece of legislation in recent history. My husband worked 40 years paying into social security for his family, I worked 35 years teaching youngsters to respect their country and its laws only to have my country turn its on back on me. If this is not changed soon I will be living at a poverty level. Please HELP !!!!

Washington can't hear you; the politicians in both political parties are too busy listening to their masters in the gangster class to care about whether you have a decent retirement income or not. They are working on more ways to screw us over.

Fat Chance They Will Do One Damned Thing About It

I am of course referring to that goddamned theft of public employees in states not covered by Social Security, also known as the "windfall elimination provision" and the "government pension offset." These bullshit penalties were put in by Congress in around 1978, ostensibly to discourage high-paid military personnel from "double-dipping" in both military and private sector work. Of course, it was the civilian public sector labor force in 14 states and other jurisdictions around the country who got fucked over, since Congress assumed all public employees work their entire careers in public employment and get such "generous" pensions. It's debatable what constitutes a "generous" pension. Congress probably assumes pensions are "generous" like yours truly gets of just 300 a month (and may go up a few bucks this month since I am now in my fourth year of collecting PERS) and got into public employment while in my forties. Additionally, I have no spouse as a safety net. Oh, I appreciate getting a pension of some kind, unlike most workers, but face it, workers in the private sector don't get fucked over on Social Security because they have pensions or they have 401(k)s. Public employees in states that pay into Social Security also don't get fucked over.

The only way people like me can keep full Social Security benefits is if we work in "substantial employment" covered by Social Security for at least thirty years. Well, I have "only" 24-25 years in, and I don't believe there is a chance in HELL I will EVER work full-time, let alone part-time, ever again.

There should have been a class action lawsuit filed years ago against this rotten legislation, and our elected officials in D.C., for all of their talk about repealing these shitty laws, won't do one fucking thing about it.

Hell, why should they when most are owned by the likes of Peter J. Peterson, who wants to destroy Social Security and fuck EVERYBODY over so they can have more?

Social Security Fairness wants to pressure Obama, but he has more pressing matters to worry about, like trying to save his marriage or working with Michelle on a post-presidency divorce settlement, if the tabloids can be believed.

WEP/GPO: Get Rid of Them--NOW!!!!

There has been talk for years and years to repeal that horrendous WEP/GPO Social Security offsets for government employees who work in jobs not paying into Social Security, but not a damned thing has been done about it.

There is a bipartisan attempt this Congress to finally DO something about this legalized theft, but again it doesn't appear it will get out of committee in the near future.

Many of us are hurting now, and many more of us will be hurting in the near future if these onerous offsets aren't repealed.

Yours truly gets a whopping $300.40 from Nevada PERS, yet will get something like 50 to 60 a month stolen from the small Social Security that will have to be taken at 62 as long as there is no full-time work on the horizon.

Here are the stats of the current odds of the latest attempt:

3% chance of getting past committee.
2% chance of being enacted.

Only 11% of House bills made it past committee and only 3% were enacted in 2011–2013. [show factors | methodology]

The following factors helped this bill:

The sponsor is in the majority party and at least one third of the bill's cosponsors are from the minority party.

There is at least one cosponsor from the majority party and one cosponsor outside of the majority party.

A cosponsor in the majority party has a high leadership score.

The bill's companion S. 896 was sponsored by a member of the other party.

The following factors hurt this bill:

3-5 cosponsors serve on a committee to which the bill has been referred.

The following factors hurt this bill in getting past committee but help it on the floor:

The bill was referred to House Ways and Means.

Here is the actual House bill.

Four senators, two Democratic, two Republican, have introduced a Senate version of this bill:

We are very pleased to announce that a bi-partisan group of four Senators have introduced the Social Security Fairness Act of 2013 (S. 896) — Mark Begich of AK, Susan Collins of ME, Dean Heller of NV, and Elizabeth Warren of MA. This follows the introduction of HR 1795 in the House by Congressman Rodney Davis (IL) and Adam Schiff (CA). (A list of Members of Congress who have already signed on to co-sponsor this bill is at the foot of this email.) This is the work of lobbyists from our different employee associations, unions and retirement groups. We thank them!!