Thanks to the final push by key members of Congress and labor leaders including AFGE, a petition to force a vote on a bill that would repeal two unfair Social Security rules has reached the 218-signature threshold.
On Sept. 19, AFGE National Vice President for District 14 and NEC Retiree Committee Chair Ottis Johnson joined Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., Rep. Abigal Spanberger, D-Va., and other public employee unions in calling on members of Congress to force a vote on H.R. 82, a bill that would repeal the government pension offset (GPO) and the windfall elimination provision (WEP).
More than two million Americans had their benefits slashed by the WEP and around 800,000 Americans were harmed by the GPO. Over two thirds, 68%, of those impacted by the GPO lost their entire Social Security benefit.
“That’s right, over a half million Americans didn’t get a single penny of their earned Social Security benefit. That is not right. It’s time for Congress to repeal these unfair penalties,” Johnson said at the press conference held by Graves and Spanberger outside the Capitol building. He was one of the union leaders from across the country including AFSCME, AFT, and APWU to speak at the conference.
Graves and Spanberger introduced H.R. 82 last year, but it has not been brought to a vote. The lawmakers recently launched the discharge petition to force a vote on the bipartisan bill, which currently has 327 cosponsors. At the time of the press conference, the discharge petition was signed by 206 members of Congress. After the press conference, they received 12 more signatures to get the bill to the floor. But there’s a seven-day waiting period before a member can call for a vote on the bill. House Speaker Mike Johnson then has two days to initiate the vote.
AFGE supports the bipartisan bill because GPO penalizes public servants who receive a government pension and are also eligible for Social Security benefits of their spouse. This provision reduces survivors’ benefits for spouses, widows, and widowers.
WEP penalizes those who have paid into Social Security at work but also receive a pension or a disability benefit from a prior employer that did not withhold Social Security payroll taxes, such as older federal retirees working under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), state and local government employees including teachers and police officers, or a pension earned abroad.
AFGE represents thousands of federal retirees and tens of thousands of federal workers abroad, mostly defense workers who are harmed by WEP/GPO.
“A family with a pension from overseas is also penalized, and these individuals are much more likely to have a pension from another job overseas or to marry someone with a foreign pension,” Johnson added. “It’s unfair to penalize our overseas defense workers keeping our country safe.”
Spanberger said she first heard about the issue when she ran for Congress in Virginia. WEP currently takes away the hard-earned benefits from more than 46,000 Virginians, and more than 8,000 Virginians have their Social Security benefits reduced by GPO.
“They’re real people. They’re not just numbers, and these Americans shouldn’t have their benefits slashed, some cases eliminated completely just because they chose to dedicate their careers to serving our communities,” she said.
Graves said repealing WEP/GPO is the right thing to do and would help people get out of poverty. This discharge petition is a grassroots effort, and the bill should be voted on this year.
“Over 40 years this has been ongoing. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been stolen, and the irony is you’re stealing from police officers. This is wrong,” he said.
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