They were put in place to make sure teachers, police and firefighters and other public service workers weren’t double dipping when they retired, meaning getting a full pension and full social security. But there’s a chance these could be changing soon, because a bill called the Social Security Fairness Act cleared the U.S. House of Representatives.
They were put in place to make sure teachers, police and firefighters and other public service workers weren't double dipping when they retired, meaning getting a full pension and full social security.
Those provisions are called the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset.
But there's a chance these could be changing soon, because a bill called the Social Security Fairness Act cleared the U.S. House of Representatives.
Connecticut educators went to D.C. this week to try to get some support for that in the Senate.
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NBC Connecticut's Mike Hydeck spoke with Connecticut Education Association President Kate Dias about it. The CEA is the largest teachers union in the state.
Mike Hydeck: Why do teachers deserve both their pension and full social security? To kind of set this up for people.
Kate Dias: Well, I think it's important to know that we're asking just for the benefits that we've paid into the system to receive. So teachers and firefighters and police aren't asking for an unearned benefit. We've made these contributions and for whatever reason, back in the late 70s, early 80s, Congress decided to penalize us for being public servants and deduct from our social security benefits, even though we paid into the system. So quite honestly, we're asking basically for what we've paid into the system to have.
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Mike Hydeck: So are there thresholds where that kicks in? So I think I read a while ago, and you can correct me if I'm wrong on this, if a teacher takes a summer job to try to make ends meet, that raises how much they make per year, and that could affect their retirement. Is that figured into the formula?
Kate Dias: So what basically happens is, all the non-education based service that we do, that we pay social security on, we have to reach a particular income threshold for those to be quarters that count towards social security. I believe the threshold is in the 30s right now. But what ends up happening is many teachers work not just those summer jobs, but second jobs, where we're paying into social security, but we are discounted for those quarters of service because of our public education service. So the fact that we are teachers by trade, they deduct almost $600 a month from our social security benefit. And oftentimes, we're not making $160,000 in our eligible quarters. We're making, you know, $30, $40,000 so when you talk about deducting almost $600 from our eligible social security benefit, it really substantially reduces it. In addition, I think actually one of the penalties that can be even more detrimental is the loss of our survivor benefit. So for example, my spouse is not an educator, has paid into social security for his entire career. When he passes, I'm not eligible at this point to even get a penny of that survivor benefit. It's seen as a "windfall." However, if I'd worked in private industry anywhere, collected a pension from, let's say, Pratt and Whitney, I would be eligible to receive the social security survivor benefit.
Mike Hydeck: So you could understand why this would have impact families. So how does this bill change the formula? Would it just eliminate those two provisions, the WPO and the other one?
Kate Dias: Yes, it eliminates the penalties that were really rather arbitrarily placed on public servants because they were trying to balance the expenditures in social security. So they really have balanced the budget on the backs of people who've paid into a system. So that's really what we're trying to say, is, "Listen, you don't actually have the right to balance this system on the backs of people who are fundamentally paying into the system." So it would really just initiate the full benefit for all of our educators, police, firefighters, municipal workers.
Mike Hydeck: The incoming Trump administration has a very different public view of public education. If you believe the rhetoric on the campaign trail, they're talking about eliminating the Department of Education or paring it back significantly. Did that put a time clock on getting this done sooner than later for you?
Kate Dias: I think the time clock for us really was about the fact that the House passed this bill so overwhelmingly. They passed it before the election, 327 positive votes. These are bipartisan. And really the time clock for us was, you have to get this through to both houses and onto any president's desk. If not now, when are we going to get that to happen? So for us, that time clock was the push from this House to get it through. If the Senate fails to act, it's an absolute travesty at this point.
Mike Hydeck: Were you surprised that it made it through the Republican-controlled Senate, and then did you get a chance also to talk to Senate leadership or senators while you were down there to push your case?
Kate Dias: So we were absolutely pleasantly surprised to see such bipartisan support in the House, and that we saw Republican leaders like Garrett Graves really usher this through and work with the constituencies. But I really, also really want to shout out to all of the people who advocated police, fire, teachers, to elevate this issue and make sure that legislators across the country needed to pay attention to this getting done. And when we were in D.C. past, on Wednesday, we met with a lot of staff from these legislators' offices, really continuing to make the case about why this should be a priority action from our Senate, and so we're really optimistic. Senator Schumer showed up in the pouring rain and absolutely said we will get a vote, and to our knowledge, it has been scheduled for next week. We are excited that Senator Schumer has prioritized this issue up there with the defense and the spending bill for the Senate to take up. He's sandwiching the vote in between those. We are optimistic, we had a lot of bipartisan support, and Senator Schumer is calling on our senators to show up and take that vote and to be on record.
