Millions of Americans are welcoming a change to their retirement funds after President Joe Biden signed a new law Sunday. Anyone who has a public pension will be able to get their full social security benefits.
With a stroke of a pen, millions of public workers got a boost to their retirement planning. President Biden Sunday signing the social security fairness act.
“This is thousands and thousands of people across the state that are now going to have access to their full benefits,” said Kate Dias, president of the Connecticut Education Association.
The act will repeal two federal policies, the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset. This includes people who get pensions from state and federal jobs that aren’t covered by social security, affecting workers like firefighters, police officers, and teachers. Dias says it’s a long time coming.
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“So we're talking about decades, you know, we're talking about at least 40 years,” she said.
Dias says this benefits educators who may have side gigs like being coaches or teaching summer school where they previously could not get social security benefits from.
“There’s 22,000 educators that are impacted immediately and every single educator that's currently employed is impacted,” she said.
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She says this could attract more people looking to possibly shift their careers towards public service, undeterred about not getting social security benefits they may have paid into in a previous occupation.
“Somebody could have a 20-year career as an accountant and come forward and have a 20-year career as an educator,” Dias said.
The text of the bill shows this will affect retroactively Social Security payments starting back in January 2024 retroactively.
