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Rejoice! The WEP is Eliminated [1]

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Date: 2024-12-22  

It’s not getting much coverage here but the US Senate just passed the Social Security Fairness Act which is now on its way to POTUS for signature. The act repeals the 1983 Windfall Elimination Provision, which cuts Social Security benefits for workers who receive government pensions, and the 1977 Government Pension Offset, which reduces Social Security benefits for spouses and survivors of people who themselves receive a government pension.

The Windfall Elimination Program, a euphemistically-named provision, was cooked up over 40 years ago to save the government money by reducing Social Security payments to people who had also earned a pension doing work where they did not pay Soc Sy contributions on the income — this includes me, and over 1 million US retirees including teachers, firemen, police, military, and other government and municipal workers. Those workers often went on to other careers under which they did make Social Security payments and, eventually, paid in enough to qualify for benefits — based on the amount they paid in. The WEP was applied to these workers to reduce the amount they could receive by as much as $587 per month; the argument was that pension systems and Social Security are weighted to give lower end recipients a bit more so having 2 small pensions gives people a ‘windfall’ because they theoretically get a bit more than a person who only worked within the Social Security system and has one ‘big’ one. In the worst cases of the GPO rule, I’ve read that a person whose spouse died could have their spousal Social Security benefit amount reduced from $800 to $200 per month because of the amount they received in a pension they paid into separately.

The bill had been stalled in the powerful House Ways and Means Committee for nearly two years but was passed by the House in November 2024 with bipartisan support which it also received in the Senate. Once Biden signs it, it should take effect starting in January 2025 and might be retrospectively applied for benefits paid in 2024 too.

I was pissed when I applied for Social Security and found out that my predicted benefit was going to be reduced by about $500 per month because I had a pension from the UK’s Royal Air Force where I worked for 20 years even though I paid into the UK’s RAF and State Pension Scheme (UK equivalent to US SS) while I earned that pension. I’m now a naturalized US citizen but I have to declare all income to the IRS wherever in the world it comes from so I have paid US taxes on my UK pensions. Personally, I hope to get an increase of about $500 per month, an amount which has been docked from my Social Security benefit payments since I first claimed them in 2023.

It’s seems widely accepted by Congress that the WEP and GPO were unfair and I’m happy for all that will now benefit from this wrong that’s been righted but some people have lost out for decades and may never be made whole.

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