I'm Glad There's A Serious Discussion Of This Issue

     From Twitter or officially "X."

GOP Asking Questions

      Ways and Means Republicans are asking questions about implementation of the WEP/GPO bill, including whether the agency needs more money to implement it. About time they start asking questions.

     By the way, I don’t see why this letter is only signed by Republicans other than the fact that almost all civility has broken down in the House of Representatives. 

Implementation Of WEP/GPO Elimination

     I've sorta asked the question before but never received what I thought was a definitive answer. To what extent will the elimination of WEP/GPO require manual recomputations? How much of this can be done through IT? These are important questions.

    If there will be manual recomputations, I'm going to be upset if they take priority over Social Security straightening out my clients' windfall offsets and workers compensation offsets and other such routine issues. The WEP/GPO people can take their turn in line like everybody else. If it takes six months or longer, and it will if these folks aren't granted priority, welcome to the reality of what the Social Security Administration is today.

And Finally The Discussions Of Practicalities Begin

      From The Hill:

 On Jan. 5, President Biden signed into law the Social Security Fairness Act, which will provide new or additional Social Security benefits for about 3 million individuals who receive government pensions from jobs not covered by Social Security. …

The Social Security Administration (SSA) will now need to quickly scramble and begin issuing large back payments to millions of individuals. 

Complicating the issue, SSA received its administrative budget via a continuing resolution with no provision for the potentially large start-up costs to implement the legislation. SSA’s administrative budget has been in sharp decline over several years, and the agency recently testified before Congress that it now has “one of the lowest staffing levels in 50 years.” 

It is unlikely SSA has the bandwidth to implement the new benefit structure seamlessly, quickly and correctly.

Biden To Sign WEP/GPO Bill Today

     The Associated Press is reporting that President Biden will sign into law today the bill to end the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset.

WEP/GPO Bill To Be Signed On Monday?

     The rumor is that the President will sign the bill ending the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset on Monday.

WEP/GPO Legislation Contains A Year Of Back Benefits

 

    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. 

WEP/GPO Bill Passes

      The bill to end the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset has passed its final Congressional step and will become law once President Biden signs it.

     I have a few questions about this:

• What’s the effective date?
• Can Social Security implement this without manual recalculations?
• Were there any other provisions in the bill apart from WEP/GPO?

WEP/GPO Bill Advances While Government Shutdown Looms

     The Hill reports that the bill to end the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset passed a crucial vote in the Senate yesterday 73-27. This isn’t final passage but the margin suggests that the bill is likely to pass. It has already been passed the House of Representatives.

    In other legislative news, President-elect Trump seems to be ordering a government shutdown. At least he’s ordering Republican legislators not to vote for the Continuing Resolution they just negotiated with Democrats. The GOP can’t pass the CR without Democratic votes in this Congress and probably not in the next. Most of Social Security will stay open if the shutdown happens beginning December 20 but there would be no money to continue paying salaries for long. I have no idea what the endgame is here. 

     If you voted for Trump, this is the chaos you voted for.

WEP/GPO Bill Expected To.Reach Senate Floor Today

      The bill to end the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, which has already passed the House of Representatives, is expected to reach the Senate floor today. 

Senate Vote Coming On WEP-GPO Bill

     Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, has promised that there will be a vote on the bill to eliminate the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offsets which reduce Social Security benefits for those receiving pension benefits not based upon earnings upon which there had been no FICA withheld. This is mostly former employees of state and local governments which did not pay the FICA tax. The bill has already passed the House of Representatives.

GPO And WEP Elimination Bill Passes House

      It happened quietly but the bill to end the Govern Pension Offset and Windfall Elimination Provision passed in the House of Representives Tuesday night. Its fate in the Senate is uncertain.

On Election Night House Freedom Caucus Uses Scheme To Stall Bill To Repeal WEP And GPO

     From Roll Call:

Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus orchestrated an unusual play on the House floor during a rare election night, 5 p.m. pro forma session that resulted in killing, at least for now, a broadly popular bill that was set to hit the floor as soon as next week.

Reps. Garret Graves, R-La., and Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., had successfully rounded up the 218 signatures needed for a discharge petition to bypass GOP leaders and bring up bipartisan legislation that would repeal two long-standing provisions docking Social Security benefits for certain retirees. They were set to make their move as soon as Tuesday night by triggering a two-day clock to bring to the floor the special rule for immediate consideration of the bill. ...

Then the Freedom Caucus, which opposes the measure’s $196 billion cost over a decade, intervened.

What happened: Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., a more or less local member from the Eastern Shore, presided over the pro forma session, which lasted all of seven minutes.

During the brief session he recognized outgoing Rep. Bob Good, R-Va. — the former Freedom Caucus chair who lost his primary — for a unanimous consent request. Good’s request to lay the Social Security bill on the table was agreed to by unanimous consent, with no one else in the chamber to object.

The effect of laying the bill on the table in this context, under House rules, has the same effect as defeating a bill on the floor; it is dead for the time being. Since the discharge petition was actually filed on the rule for consideration, not the bill itself, the rule could still be called up for a vote under discharge procedures, which if adopted would remove the bill from the table and allow a vote.

 Alternatively, a brand new, identical bill could simply be introduced — as early as this Friday’s pro forma session — and that measure put up for a vote under suspension of the rules as soon as next week. ...

Harris’ move to recognize Good goes against the “Speaker’s announced policies” in exercising authorities under House rules, which stipulate that such UC requests can only be made after receiving assurances that the majority and minority leadership of both the House and the relevant committees have no objection.

In fact, before Harris recognized Good, House Parliamentarian Jason Smith can be heard on the microphone saying: “The chair will not entertain the gentleman’s request. The chair cannot entertain the gentleman’s request.” ...

WEP And GPO Tactics Raise Concerns Among Republican Legislators

     From The Hill:

A group of House Republicans is making a rare move that would force a vote on a bill to reform aspects of Social Security, stirring unrest in the conference.

The bill at the heart of the push, also dubbed the Social Security Fairness Act, seeks to do away with the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO), a proposal that backers on both sides of the aisle argue is long overdue.

The bill enjoys support from more than 100 House Republicans, and almost four dozen have cosigned the effort to use what’s known as a discharge petition to force consideration of the bill — and the strategy is rubbing some in the conference the wrong way.

“In a well-run Congress, no legislator signs a discharge petition if you’re a majority. That is a rule that is never broken,” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) told The Hill. “And the fact that 47 of my colleagues signed a discharge petition shows that we have an utter lack of discipline.” ...

Republicans say the matter was a topic of debate in a conference meeting earlier this week. ...

    Regardless of the House vote, it's very unlikely that this legislation will be voted on in the Senate.

...

WEP And GPO Bill Advances In House

      From Federal News Network:

Legislation to repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset is nearing the finish line in the House.

Just over a week after it was filed, a discharge petition for the Social Security Fairness Act has reached the 218-signature threshold needed to force the bill to a floor vote.

Thirteen House lawmakers added their signatures to the petition on Thursday, after Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) and Garret Graves (R-Pa.) gathered advocates outside the Capitol building to urge their colleagues to push their legislation forward. …

Don’t get excited. This has no hope of passage in the Senate in this Congress.

Congressional Hearing On GPO/WEP

     The House Social Security Subcommittee held a hearing on Tuesday on the Government Pension Offset/Windfall Elimination Provision in the Social Security Act that deal with cases in which a person is eligible for both Social Security benefits and a pension based upon earnings not covered by FICA. Two of the four witnesses called for modification of the formulas used to determine the offset and another called for its elimination. As things stand now, it's highly unlikely that anything will be done about this.

House Social Security Subcommittee Field Hearing

     With no advance notice that I'm aware of the House Social Security Subcommittee held a "field hearing" yesterday in Baton Rouge on the effects of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO), which reduce Social Security benefits due to the receipt of pensions from work not covered by the FICA tax. Apparently, Louisiana doesn't cover state and local workers under Social Security so this comes up a lot in that state. It's obvious from the opening statements that the Republican leadership of the Subcommittee think these provisions are unfair, which they may well be.

    The merits of the WEP and GPO can be argued but isn't there more than a little hypocrisy in the Republican Party's endless calls to "save Social Security" by increasing the retirement age and subjecting Social Security benefits to means testing at the same time they're acting as if they want to increase Social Security benefits? Isn't it also a sign that they're never going to vote to increase the retirement age or means test Social Security? Those plans will always be highly unpopular.

WEP Reform Still Possible?

     From Roll Call:

Key lawmakers are eyeing a possible year-end tax package as their best shot at offering a fix for a Social Security provision that many on Capitol Hill believe unfairly cuts benefits for public employees who also have government pensions.

The issue was thrust into the spotlight after bipartisan supporters of legislation to permanently boost Social Security payouts by hundreds of dollars a month for nearly 3 million individuals were on the cusp of forcing their bill to the House floor using a special procedural tool.

But House Ways and Means Committee leaders who have been working on their own less expansive compromise plan, one they believe has a better chance of becoming law, turned off the procedural gambit by instead marking the bill up on Sept. 20.

The House’s top tax writers believe they’re close to agreement on addressing the “windfall elimination provision,” which lowers Social Security payouts for individuals who qualify for pensions from their work as teachers, police officers, government employees and other public sector jobs and for Social Security benefits from separate employment. ...

WEP And GPO Elimination Bill Faces Obstacles

     From the Monroe (LA) News-Star:

A bill to eliminate the Social Security penalty for workers with government pensions and their spouses hit a snag in the U.S. House this week, forcing Louisiana U.S. Reps. Garret Graves and Julia Letlow into a last-ditch effort to keep it alive.

Graves and Letlow, both Republicans and co-authors of the Social Security Fairness Act (H.R. 82) by Illinois Democrat Rodney Davis, thought they'd secured enough support in August to force a vote on the House floor, but they blamed a procedural maneuver from Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi for stalling the vote.

Davis, Graves and Letlow have scheduled a press conference Thursday morning to announce an effort to secure 218 colleagues' signatures on a petition to trigger a floor vote, but time is running out for the current Congress, which will likely meet only a handful of days before and after the mid-term elections.

"Only when we were on the cusp of forcing a floor vote did Democratic leadership take action to ... essentially bog it down in a backlog," Letlow, of Start, said during a House floor speech Wednesday. ...

WEP And GPO Elimination Bill Makes Progress In House

      From Federal News Network:

… The Social Security Fairness Act, introduced by Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and sponsored by Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) now has more than 290 co-sponsors, more than enough to force a House floor vote.

The bipartisan legislation would eliminate two provisions of the 1935 Social Security Act that reduce or eliminate the Social Security benefits of more than 2 million retirees.

One is the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), which reduces the Social Security benefits of local, state and federal retirees who worked in Social Security-covered employment — i.e. private-sector jobs — and also received a government annuity from their non-Social Security-covered government employment.

The other provision is the Government Pension Offset (GPO), which reduces the Social Security benefits of spouses, widows and widowers with pensions from a federal, state or local government job. …

     Spoiler alert: This stands little or no chance of passing the Senate in this Congress.