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Michael P. Norton | SHNS
Public retirees are celebrating an overnight U.S. Senate vote that could end a decades-long fight and deliver Social Security benefits to teachers, public safety workers and others who earned them.
"Tonight, the Senate finally corrects a 50-year mistake by passing the Social Security Fairness Act," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said following debate and a bipartisan 76-20 vote to repeal two federal laws.
"No longer will public retirees see their hard-earned Social Security benefits robbed from them thanks to this bill," Schumer said. "It's a very good thing that one of the final acts of the 118th Congress is delivering a huge win for working Americans."
President Joseph Biden is expected to sign the bill, according to MassRetirees -- the Retired State, County and Municipal Employees Association. Years of lobbying from two other unions, the Massachusetts Coalition of Police Professional Fire Fighters of Massachusetts, helped push the bill to final passage, MassRetirees said.
The bill repeals the Social Security Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) laws, which Sen. Edward Markey said he opposed in 1983 when he was a member of the U.S. House.
Those "unfair and unjust" laws harm nearly 3 million public retirees, including 130,000 in Massachusetts, MassRetirees said. Once the bill's provisions are implemented, the Social Security benefits of certain retirees "will be restored to the correct amount going forward," the group said.
"I know there'll be people all across Massachusetts and the country who will be celebrating in their living rooms all across our nation," Markey said in a video included in a MassRetirees email early Saturday morning.
According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, the federal laws marked for repeal "reduce regular Social Security benefits for workers and/or their eligible family members if the worker receives (or is entitled to) a pension based on earnings from employment not covered by Social Security." The WEP affects retired or disabled workers and their family members, and the GPO affects spouses and survivors.
The House voted 327-75 in November to pass the bill. At the time, MassCOP President Scott Hovsepian said that it had "taken decades for us to reach this milestone."
"Law enforcement officers and other public servants and employees have been robbed of millions of dollars in benefits they earned through hard work because of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO),” Hovsepian said.
