President Biden has said he will sign a bill that gets rid of provisions that have been decreasing the retirement funds of retired public employees since the 1980s.
The Social Security Fairness Act , after passing the House 327-75-1 in November. All of Ohio's congressional delegation voted for it, except for Vice-President elect U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), who didn't vote. Vance and outgoing Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) were signed on as sponsors of the bill.
For Brown, its approval was a bittersweet victory, since he had fought for and sponsored it for more than two decades.
"Congress ensured that police officers, firefighters, teachers, and public servants across Ohio will be able to retire with the Social Security they spent their lives paying into," Brown said.
Brown was defeated in his reelection bid in November. Republican political newcomer and Northeast Ohio businessman Bernie Moreno will take the seat in January.
In the House, the measure was sponsored by Ohio Republican Reps. Mike Turner, Troy Balderson, David Joyce, Bill Johnson, Max Miller, Mike Carey and Michael Rulli and by Ohio Democratic Reps. Joyce Beatty, Shontel Brown, Marcy Kaptur, Emilia Strong Sykes and Greg Landsman.
Why weren't some workers getting back all they paid in?
Since President Ronald Reagan signed the Social Security Reform Act in 1983, retired public employees who paid into Social Security from jobs they held in the private sector haven’t been able to collect 2/3 of it because of two provisions in that federal law kept public employees from getting their full pensions and Social Security earnings. Employees who paid into Social Security and private pensions were unaffected. But teachers, firefighters, public school, and other public employees sometimes found they would have been better off not working in the public sector because of the reduction. And some of employees on the lower end of the income scale discovered they may have made more in retirement if they hadn't worked in the public sector at all.
“It's been a long time coming," said Aristotle Hutras, who is now retired but worked in the public pension system for decades. He served for 22 years as the head of the Ohio Retirement Study Council.
Hutras said the newly passed elimination of the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision will allow public retirees to get the full amount of what they have earned. He said the U.S. government has tried to protect the Social Security system by unfairly reducing the Social Security returns or pension earnings of public employees.
“They’ve been balancing Social Security, the solvency of it, on the backs of public employees who had a job prior to their public service and paid into Social Security," Hutras said.
Hutras says there’s been bipartisan support for ending the provision but it has taken years to get it across the finish line.
"I think it got through because the proverbial kicked the can down the road, 'well, here's the way we can save some money, here's the way we can increase the solvency of Social Security in the future without really having to do anything,'" Hutras said.
Change underscores a need for a permanent fix
The the Social Security Fairness Act would cost an estimated $196 billion over 10 years.
“It has been teed up in I don’t know how many congresses before but it’s about time," Hutras said. "And now Congress needs to get to work on fixing the solvency of Social Security into the future."
Hutras said with the elimination of these provisions, it is now even more important than ever for the government to figure out how to shore up social security without taking money away from workers who have paid into it.
The if left unaddressed, the Social Security system could be unable to pay scheduled benefits in full starting in 2033. And while there have been some proposed changes to shore up Social Security such as raising the retirement age or means testing the benefit, none have come close to passage.
