Government Executive: House lawmakers plan to force a vote on bill to kill provision that cuts some feds’ retirement pay

GOVERNMENT EXECUTIVE, ERICH WAGNER

bipartisan pair of lawmakers announced Monday that they would act to force a vote on the House floor on a measure that would repeal a pair of controversial tax rules that negatively impact some federal employees’ retirement income.

The Social Security Fairness Act (H.R. 82), introduced last year by Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Garrett Graves, R-La., would repeal Social Security’s windfall elimination provision and government pension offset.

The windfall elimination provision reduces Social Security benefits for retired federal, state and local government workers who worked in both the private sector and at a government job where Social Security is not intended as an element of their retirement income, like the Civil Service Retirement System. The government pension offset reduces spousal and survivor Social Security benefits by two-thirds if the beneficiary is also a government employee.

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According to the lawmakers, the windfall elimination provision affects the Social Security benefits of roughly 2 million former government workers, while the GPO impacts nearly 800,000 retirees.

But despite widespread dissatisfaction with the two provisions among government workers who have spent part of their career in the private sector and growing bipartisan support for axing them, the measure has never made it to the House floor for a vote. As of Monday, the bill had 325 cosponsors in the House.

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In a statement Monday, Spanberger and Graves announced that when Congress returns from the August recess next month, they will file a discharge petition in an effort to force a floor vote on the bill. In order to be successful, a discharge petition requires the signatures of at least 218 lawmakers.

“For more than 40 years, millions of Americans—police officers, teachers, firefighters and other local and state public servants—have been stripped of their Social Security benefits as an unjust penalty for devoting much of their careers to serving their communities and fellow Americans,” the pair said. “These Virginians, Louisianans and American across our country deserve their full retirement benefits—just like every other American who has paid into Social Security. For years, we have worked together to build bipartisan support for this effort and urge House leadership to take real action to right this wrong. As these efforts have stalled, we are using every tool at our disposal to finally get this done.”

Spanberger’s and Graves’ bill is not the only piece of legislation aimed at reforming how ex-government workers who spent some time in the private sector receive Social Security benefits. The Equal Treatment of Public Servants Act (H.R. 5342), introduced by Reps. Jody Arrington, R-Texas, and Vincente Gonzalez, D-Texas, would replace the windfall elimination provision with a new formula for calculating the Social Security benefits of those who split their career between the private and public sectors. The measure has 34 other cosponsors, all Republicans.