WASHINGTON — The Senate passed legislation early Saturday to boost Social Security payments for millions of people, pushing a longtime priority for former public employees through Congress in one of its last acts for the year.
The bipartisan bill, which next heads to President Joe Biden, will eliminate longtime reductions to Social Security benefits for nearly 3 million people who receive pensions from work in federal, state and local government, or public service jobs like teachers, firefighters and police officers. Advocates say the Social Security Fairness Act rights a decades-old disparity, though it will also put further strain on Social Security Trust Funds.
The legislation has been decades in the making. But the push to pass it came together in the final weeks and was completed in the final minutes that lawmakers were in Washington before Congress resets next year under President-elect Donald Trump.
All Senate Democrats, as well as 27 Republicans, voted for the bill, giving it a final tally of 76-20 and showing wide support for addressing what supporters called an unfair section of federal law that hurts public service retirees.
“They have earned these benefits,” Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the lead Republican sponsor of the bill, said of the workers affected. “This is an unfair, inequitable penalty.”
The bill repeals two provisions — the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset — that limit Social Security benefits for certain recipients if they receive retirement payments from other sources such as the public retirement program for a state or local government.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who led the proposal and will leave Congress after losing reelection to Republican Bernie Moreno, said the current restrictions make “no sense.”
“These workers serve the public. They protect our communities. They teach our kids,” he said.
“They pay into Social Security just like everyone else.”
People who currently have reductions in their Social Security benefits under the exceptions would soon see a boost in their monthly payments. But those increased payments would also add an estimated $195 billion to federal deficits over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Social Security Trust Funds were already estimated to be unable to pay out full benefits beginning in 2035. The change will hasten the program’s insolvency date by about half a year. A typical dual-income couple retiring in 2033 would see an additional $25,000 lifetime reduction in their benefits, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Many of the bill’s opponents acknowledged that the current reductions are not fair to public service retirees, but said they could not support the bill when the program faces challenges.
“We caved to the pressure of the moment instead of doing this on a sustainable basis,” said Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, a fiscal hawk who opposed the bill.
The policy changes will also heap more work on the Social Security Administration when the agency is already at its lowest staffing level in 50 years. The agency currently has a staff of about 56,400 — the lowest level since 1972 — even as it serves more people than ever.
The stopgap government funding bill that also passed early Saturday did not include increased funding for the agency, which is currently in a hiring freeze.
Republican supporters of the overhaul also said they would return to work on larger fixes to Social Security. Trump has said he will not touch benefits, even as his administration looks to make deep budget cuts elsewhere.
Public-sector unions fought hard for the changes. The Maine Service Employees Association, the one representing most state workers, said the new law would open benefits to tens of thousands of Maine retirees, with some getting up to $12,000 per year. Every member of the state’s congressional delegation supported the law.
“This is a great day for workers in Maine and throughout our nation,” Mark Brunton, the union’s president, said in a statement.
Story by Stephen Groves. BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.
