Social Security Fairness Act: $330 Monthly Boost for 2M Public Workers

The Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset – such delightfully bureaucratic terms for Social Security policies that essentially told firefighters, teachers, and police officers their service wasn’t quite worthy of full retirement benefits. Because clearly, choosing public service careers meant these folks were just too flush with cash anyway, right?

The “Reform” We’ve All Been Waiting For

Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has now decided to phase out these Social Security provisions. How generous! After only 40 years of penalizing public workers, they’ve determined that maybe, just maybe, these dedicated professionals deserve what everyone else gets from Social Security. Next thing you know, they’ll be suggesting public employees deserve respect too.

The Social Security Fairness Act (official legislative text), the latest legislation affecting millions of Americans, will gradually eliminate these provisions over the next five years. Five whole years! Because apparently correcting a four-decade injustice overnight would just be too efficient for our retirement system.

Impact on Retirees

Approximately 2 million retirees will benefit from this change in Social Security eligibility. That’s 2 million people who had the audacity to choose careers serving their communities rather than pursuing more lucrative private sector jobs. The nerve of these people, expecting their full Social Security benefits!

The average increase in benefits will be about $330 per month. Just imagine what these public servants might do with such a windfall! Perhaps they’ll splurge on luxuries like:

• Prescription medications
• Heating their homes during winter
• Paying down debt
• Actually enjoying retirement

Financial experts are calling this a “significant improvement in retirement security.” Translation: “We’re finally stopping a Social Security policy that never should have existed in the first place, please applaud us.”

Truly, the system works. It just takes half a lifetime to correct obvious mistakes in our Government Pension Offset and benefits structure.