Let us explore the history and facts about Social Security before Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy dismantle whatever pieces are still there.
Congress just passed the Social Security Fairness Act that restores full Social Security benefits to teachers, law enforcement officers, social workers, firefighters, and other public employees who have already paid Social Security taxes throughout their working lives. The Social Security Fairness Act restores the rights of those public employees to claim their Social Security benefits by repealing two provisions of the Windfall Elimination Provisions (WEP) and Government Pension Offset Act (GPO) that were signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983.
Under the leadership of Senators Susan Collins and Bill Cassidy, the Senate passed the Social Security Fairness Act just before Elon and Vivek took control of our money. Twenty senators objected to this new law on the basis it would reduce the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund by six months. They also counted on the public’s reaction to the word “government pension.” If firefighters, teachers and police officers already have a government pension, why would they also need their earned Social Security Retirement benefits as part of their retirement?
Gema Hernandez
Anticipating there will be a lot of misinformation about the benefits of the Social Security Fairness Act, and what can be done with the Social Security Trust Fund, it is essential first to explore how teachers, firefighters, and other public employees have been unfairly Impacted by the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset Law since 1983.
The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) impacted several workers and their spouses. Traditionally, a young person’s first job is not as a government worker but as a waitress, delivery worker, clerk, and part-time staff member of various employers. From this starting point, young workers will continue to work on multiple jobs, not realizing that in each of those jobs, they are contributing to Social Security as they add quarters toward obtaining eligibility for the Social Security program. Throughout their working life, they never realized that if they ever got a government job, they would lose their accumulated Social Security eligibility benefit.
We are not discussing getting a government job as an agency head or senior-level worker. We are talking about being hired as a teacher, a social worker, a firefighter, a law enforcer, or any position in a government agency. For example, independent school districts and public schools are government agencies. Also, the Veterans Administration, CDC, and EPA are all government agencies. Working for any of the above government agencies makes the worker eligible for a pension, but by default, based on the Social Security Windfall Elimination Provisions and Government Pension Offset law, they will lose the money they have already paid into the Social Security Trust Fund.
This elimination provision reduces workers’ Social Security benefits by two-thirds of their government pension. For example, if you get a monthly Civil Service Pension of $3,000,