The Social Security Fairness Act, repealing the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset portions of Social Security law, got President Joe Biden’s signature on Sunday. The National Fraternal Order of Police, which favors the bill along with other public employees, and groups like the National Education Association supported the bill, as did President Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
The new legislation repeals the two provisions that reduced Social Security benefits to employees who did not consistently pay into Social Security on some or all their earnings, and who are receiving a pension from that work history in lieu of Social Security.
Due to the high number of government workers who receive pensions, Alaska has more retirees whose bank accounts will benefit from the bill than any other state, by percentage.
Some retired workers, such as those who work for the municipality of Juneau, never got a cut in their Social Security payments because the city of Juneau continued to pay Social Security on workers’ behalf. Thus, they get their defined benefit pension and their full Social Security payment.
Many Alaska retirees receive a pension through the old defined benefits plan that the State of Alaska had for state workers, municipal workers, and teachers, until it was discontinued in 2006. Social Security makes a big deduction on their federal benefits, depending on a variety of factors.
The Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset were tacked onto the Social Security Act in 1983.
These provisions reduced or eliminated altogether retirement benefits for more than 2.4 million Americans. According one report, the WEP has denied benefits to more than 1.7 million Americans, and the GPO impacted 20,000 Social Security beneficiaries. More than 320,000 American retirees are impacted by both the WEP and the GPO.
Biden had until Jan. 8 to sign the bill. Per the U.S. Constitution, after 10 days, excluding Sundays, a bill that has passed both House and Senate “automatically becomes law (if Congress is in session) or does not become law if Congress adjourns before the 10-day deadline. The members of the 119th Congress were sworn in on Friday.
The Congressional Budget Office said eliminating the Windfall Elimination Provision will increase payments to these impacted retirees by an average of $360 per month. Ending the Government Pension Offset will increase payments by $700 a month for 380,000 recipients who get benefits, and qualifying widows will get an average of $1,190 more per months.
It’s unclear how much this will cost the Social Security system, but some estimates say it will drive it into insolvency about six months before the expected date of 2035.
Social Security Administration issued an emergency message in mid-2024, instructing workers on how to answer the public’s questions about the changes that would be coming if the bill was signed into law. That explanation is at this link.
Great… worked 25 yrs paying into SS. Then 20 for the state.. For the past 20 yrs, the gov has stolen most of the money I paid into SS. Now how bout some back pay?
Thank the unions. Biden is a scumbag.
How about thanking everyone who passed it before Biden…he signed the bill that our legislature voted for…
As one who paid in for years to pay for college & supplement my teacher’s salary & now as a retiree who receives less than I deserve… I thank all those who voted for righting a 40 year old wrong.
The only reason the WEP was put into place is because social security is heavily subsidized for low income workers. You are about to receive a “windfall” that you did not pay enough social security tax to support. Unless I am missing something you have not paid social security taxes for the past twenty years. Yet somehow you think you are entitled to a subsidy that you would not have received if all your earnings were subject to social security taxes. And, yes, I disagree with Trump on this.
Why double dip when you can triple dip?
We are entitled because we paid SS taxes for ten years…40 quarters or more that are required to receive SS benefits. I worked at restaurants at 15 to have spending money since I had 9 brothers & sisters, I worked my way through college working at restaurants to get my teaching degree & then worked summer jobs to supplement my teacher’s salary so I earned my SS. My jobs were low paying so I my SS won’t even be $1,000. with this new legislation but as a retiree another $200. will be welcomed.
Yeah $360 a month, what a “windfall”.
You are missing something David. This isn’t something for nothing as all quarters for SS have been paid. I don’t understand why some people can’t get this simple premise: If we paid in to both systems; we deserve a payout by both systems. Period.
Hi David—
Yes, you are “missing something”.
It could be worse. You could be a 20 something who is going to be screwed big time when Social Security collapses. Social Security is funded like a Ponzi scheme, collecting money today and immediately paying more in benefits with no ability to meet its obligations in future. Did you really believe Al Gore when he told us the funds were in a lock box?
When you ask for payback, whom do you expect to pay you? Your children? Are you willing to load further debt on young people to fund your benefits? You have the current generation of boomers who are receiving benefits that were never funded appropriately to insure that reserves would be available to pay the benefits that I and likely you are receiving or are soon to receive. If SS were an insurance company collecting money over the years to meet future benefits and failed to collect amounts adequate to fund those future liabilities (our payments), it would be declared insolvent.
Politicians of both parties have looked the other way for years at the actuarial realities, dangling benefits in front of the voters but failing to tell the public exactly what these benefits will cost. If they had been honest, taxpayers would have revolted years earlier.
Pete, yes what you’ve said is correct and judgment day is coming when Social Security goes in solvent there’s gonna be about 80 million Americans that are gonna be very upset with government. I can’t wait to see the outcome.
Hi Capt—
Thank you for your service to the State of Alaska residents. Without public employees, the state would collapse. You are the perfect example of hard working Alaskans who have 2 careers during their working years.
You are 100% correct that your SS pension, based on the money you paid into SS for 25 years, would have been reduced before the passage of this law because you work hard and after 25 years in the private sector took a public employees job. It wasn’t fair, and that is what the Social Security Fairness Act has corrected. It’s also not fair that you will not get a retroactive payment for the years the federal government “stole” a portion or your SS pension. You will though get a retroaction payment going back to 1/1/2024.
The Social Security Administration is posting to their website, their plan to implement this law. If you do not have your account set up with SSA just go to ssa.gov, get it set up, and then you can go there to find out how the law will be implemented. They have already posted that the implementation will be automatic as soon as they program their computers to include the terms of this law.
Sharon Hoffbeck
President
RPEAlaskaCare Consultants
This should end the conversation in Alaska about returning the Public Employees Retirement System and the Teachers Retirement System to the defined benefit plans, which closed to new employees on June 30, 2006. State and city employees hired since then have a defined contribution plan, a well respected and portable 401 type of retirement, so now in addition to that they will have the full Social Security amounts, as will their survivors; really the best of both worlds. If union lobbyists now attribute any reported hiring difficulties in government to the retirement options that will, in my opinion, be dishonest.
Private sector small business gets no free fringe benefits like retirement and healthcare insurance, we have to pay for those benefits ourselves while competing with other small businesses as well as illegal aliens who don’t even have a license while they send money back to they’er home countries.
Government employees are not better than the private sector worker, If it wasn’t for the private sector, we would have no government.
Not to mention public unions that take the work out of government employment.
All at the expense of their kids and grand kids. But who cares. it’s all about me .
And why can the government worker put 23,500 dollars into their 401k while I can only put 7500 into my IRA ? Answer: Because they are perceived by the power elite as being more useful to them.
Simple fix for Social Security. Move the income threshold to 500,000 from the current 168,000 and the problem is solved. Musk, Bezos, Buffet, and Gates can chip in I am sure. Locally just do the 2025 1,200 PFD and move on. The sky is never falling if you just use common sense. Hmmmm. Tax cuts with a ballooning federal deficit ? Simple, why not properly tax the multinationals corporations at the same rate as dividends. They live and work in 3rd world because of the strength of our military. They need to pay the dividend rate.
Terrible bill. Social Security goes broke six months sooner. Other Social ecurity receipients will get less. And this will cost us $190 billion over the next ten years.
Oh yeah, the US debt is at $36 trillion.
Of course Trump,a former Democrat, supports this insanity.
A country that hates its kids…
I understand the numbers behind this, you pay social security and you should be able to recoup your losses for paying into the system regardless if you worked for government or not, and you shouldn’t be punished for working for government. This isn’t a union bill and isn’t a government handout, it’s simply a making numbers make sense bill. Unfortunately it will come at the expense of Social Security, maybe it’s time for the folks we elect to address this issue that will have devastating ramifications for everyone who has paid into this system over the years. I do not plan on receiving any of the money I contributed or that my employers have contributed on my behalf. If I were allowed to keep 6.2% of my salary and the 6.2% contributed by my employer and had I put it in an inflation proof bond I’d have much more money than I will ever get out of SS. If I put it into any other interest bearing account or even an account that would produce a mid-range percentage rate return on investment I would currently have somewhere close to $1,000,000.00 if not much more in retirement. Instead I am promised that I might see a reduced percentage of the payment I was initially promised, and I seriously doubt I will see that newly promised amount.
Unfortunately our elected representatives haven’t been serious about this issue, they need to start before while there is still a small amount of time to course correct without catastrophic results.
Steve; Small business’s that only receive SS retirement get 0 retirement benefits without SS, however, government employees now receive Union backed retirement benefits and receive SS and that’s not fare to private sector small business who pay into taxes on both Union retirement and SS for government employees., its just not fare Steve because private sector creates wealth/money for which government employees now get double retirement benefits.
“Fair”, 3rd. Not “Fare”.
10-4
3rd,
If you pay into social security is it fair to receive the benefits that you paid into or not? Obviously the answer is that it is only fair to recieve the benefitsyou were promised when you paid in. These people paid into social security and it is only fair that they recieve the benefit of doing so. The majority of government employees do not pay into social security while working for the government (apparently some do according to this article) so the funds that will be disbursed to them are being paid because they’ve paid into the system. If you want to have a discussion about compensation levels for government works, that’s fine, but it’s an entirely different discussion.
Would it be fair if government employees received SS only and no union retirement frills?
The Alaska Tribal Health compact and leaders need to stop trying to force the state and feds to pay for their mistakes, “socialism” by forcing everyone into poverty so Medicare and Medicaid get billed which is not the intention of the tribal health compact; It’s fraud and totally unconstitutional. They falsified medical records, research records, employment records to enrich themselves at the expense of the governed. They practice Native preference and passed unconstitutional laws such as the Alaska physician’s Law & The Alaska Apology Law- VIOLATING PEOPLES CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS UNDER COLOR OF LAW, A CRIME, which is making people leave the state! They’ll be looking for new victims, maybe now ANILCA ANCSA can be revisited and put people and the constitution first! The only thing more predictable than them depleting government resources is them committing fraud. Private sector would rebuild the economy!
We would not even be having this conversation if the politicians had not raided the solvent Social Security Fund and stolen all our money.
What a scam! Social Security was configured on the premise that EVERYONE would pay into the system their entire working careers. Why were public sector workers given a carve out where they did not have to pay SS taxes for 30 years? I hope this ends up in court.
No, Fishing, it was not configured on the premise the everyone pay into it for their entire working careers. This is an example of how irresponsible reporting, the above article, creates chaos.
Anyone who pays into the system 40 quarters, or more, qualifies for a pension when they become age-eligible. And the amount they receive in that pension is based on the amount they contributed.
Under your scenario, a woman who works in a job that pays into SS for, say, 15 years, and then decides to have a family and does not go back to work—is not eligible to receive a SS pension for the years she did work because she didn’t work for 30 years??! Of course not; when she becomes age eligible she is entitled to receive a SS pension check for the amount she is entitled to based on the years she worked and paid into Social Security. Her pension is less than someone who works more than 15 years because she paid into the system for 15 years instead of any number more than 15. She is fairly receiving what she is entitled to.
Be that as it may, these people did in fact pay into the system and they will receive payment based upon the fact that they paid into it.
You, moderator, are plain evil. You are trying to mislead and block real information instead of guesses and innuendos. Does your author even read anything or interview anyone, or just cobble together some words to slap out there!?
And this, dear readers, is how you end up in the permanently blocked file. – sd
LOL Thanks for your work Suzanne.
Some people just don’t understand the job of “moderation”.
If you don’t mind me asking, how many are in the permanently blocked file.
I guess around 60, but that’s over a 10-year accumulation, so about six a year or so. It’s usually bad language, trolling, or being uncivil. – sd