The interesting wrinkle about the bill that will eliminate the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset is that it’s retroactive. If President Biden signs the bill, and I’ve seen no indication that he won’t, it’s effective January 2024. Those who have been subjected to WEP or GPO will get back benefits going back to the beginning of this year. I’m surprised the back benefits part made it through the legislative process.
24 comments:
Sick. Boomers win again.
I wonder if everyone will gt a 20% reduction in 2033?
Interested in how this is going to roll out and if it will be automatic are need an application or something to get it moving.
Our national debt is over 36 trillion dollars. Why are you surprised that the benefits went back one year?
The only reason it's retroactive is because the bill was introduced in 2023, and did not go through the regular legislative process. The sponsors took advantage of the relatively new House rule for a discharge petition, and weak leadership allowed members to get away with letting the Floor be hi-jacked by the process. There was no effort to fix or amend the bill - they should have changed the effective date, they should have funded SSA's admin costs.
Do birds fly?
Pathetic piece of legislation that helps special interest groups that are never satisfied. Whose going to tell the widow that her benefits are going to be cut within the decade if Congress doesn’t act?
Some of these WEP removal cases will likely have workers' compensation offset. The changing PIA will require manual reinput of the WC comps on ICF.
CS and BA in the payment centers are already backed up with huge backlogs, and no overtime. This additional WEP removal workload will not help.
I wonder if Congress included money in the bill for overtime to implement this legislation.
Schumer introduced several amendments the night of the Senate vote that would have changed the effective date, but they were all withdrawn.
Auxiliary claims like DACs, ones where the beneficiary died in 2024, and concurrent SSI/T2 cases are going to be especially challenging.
Do a search online for Government Pension Offset and you will see stories in 1982 on how GPO will mean smaller retirement benefits for women (so these impacts were known and ignored when it was passed, thank you Ronald Reagan) and periodic efforts to revise/repeal WEP/GPO from 1992, 2001/2002 which went nowhere for the same reasons people today say this should have gone nowhere. Included are the "we need to ensure those who are truly harmed get attention while not enriching those who "don't deserve it" and worries about budget impact. Also many empty promises to include this in "social security reform" . (Sound of a can bouncing down the road in the distance and one hand clapping....)
Given 25+ years (and pre-boomer years, for those who can count) of absolutely no action by those who were sympathetic "but what about..." and as useful as thoughts and prayers, I tip the hat at someone somewhere getting the US Congress to finally address decades of ignored complaints.
I guess you volunteer to tell the widow that the $ 3500 a month state pension is not sufficient since you always dreamed of visiting Las Vegas and the one year retroactive benefits will do the trick. As they say, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
I would be interesting to investigate on how many legislators will get additional benefits by repealing WEP and GPO. No pay raise..no problem!
I wasn’t going to file for divorced spouses benefits, because the benefits would be totally offset by my federal CSRS pension. Now, with the elimination of Government Pension offset, everything has changed.
I’m not going to turn down thousands of dollars, and it won’t even affect my ex-spouse’s benefits. There is no reduction.
No, they did not. The middle finger from the Congressional budgeting process still applies.
Though, SSA should count itself lucky I guess. At least they didn't get billions taken away like IRS.
The only members that would benefit would have to have been first elected before 1984 as they were covered under the old CSRS system. Any members first elected after 1984 are covered under FERS (unless they refused coverage prior to 09/30/03 which they were allowed to).
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL30631
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R47470
So, the vast majority of members aren't affected by this
legislation (just the very old-timers, like Pelosi or McConnell).
I am thinking of all those RIB claims that are less than the Medicare Part B premium. Those are going to be fun too.
President Biden is not exactly sprinting to sign this bill….I wonder why?
But the possibility of a pocket veto on any legislation is still rare, and very much up in the air. The National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, a longtime advocate of the Social Security Fairness Act, said it’s “optimistic” that Biden will sign the bill into law by Jan. 8.
If you have not done so, better call to schedule an appointment today or you will loose a month of benefits.
No to mention all the CSRS people not insured on their own record subject to total GPO offset who didn't file for spousal/widow's benefits specifically on advice of the agency due to systems issue preventing their Medicare premiums from continuing to be withheld from their CSRS annuities.
They are completely underestimating the impact that this is going to have from the GPO side of things as there are a lot of people who never filed specifically due to total GPO offset.
The National Fraternal Order of Police (who were very big supporters of the bill) have stated their leadership was informed by the White House that Biden is set to sign the legislation on January 6th.
The new law would come at a time when the Social Security Administration is operating with its lowest staffing level in more than 50 years, or since 1972, with a hiring freeze recently put in place, a spokesperson noted. Congress rejected the White House budget office's request to increase its funding, first in September and again last week, leaving it flat
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