I've moved to Substack.

For five bucks a month.

Long-time readers of my blog, fredklonsky.com, know that I post nearly every day.

I write about politics, international, national and local, with a Chicago sensibility.

I am a retired public school teacher, union activist, former local union president, community organizer and artist.

For nearly twenty years I’ve offered this perspective on my blog.

Now I am asking for a small subscription of five bucks a month.

HR82. The WEP/GPO

Again, if you have followed me on social media you know that one of my issues is the WEP/GPO.

WEP stands for Windfall Elimination Provision.

GPO stands for Government Pension Offset.

These two federal laws impact teachers like me who worked in the private sector before becoming teachers and who has a spouse enrolled in Social Security.

It impacts teachers in 15 states whose retirement benefit when we retire from teaching is from a state pension.

That’s me.

From the time I received my Social Security card at the age of 16 I worked in what they call the private sector.

Factory work mostly. I worked on an assembly line making automobile tires. Pop machines. Bicycles. Truck trailers. Steel.

By the beginning of the 80s America was well into losing its industrial base, shipping jobs to countries where they could pay their workers less.

It was time for me to think about a career and teaching seemed like a good idea. When I graduated high school in the 60s I was planning on studying Art and then teaching. Since the 60s were a time of change I put those plans on hold. Now it was time to go back to that plan.

What I didn’t know about was that by becoming a teacher I was going to lose most of the contributions I and my employer had made to Social Security. Nearly two thirds of that money was now gone when I retired. All that was left was enough to pay for my Medicare.

And I also gave up any claims on my wife’s death benefit from Social Security if she should die before me.

That’s WEP/GPO in a nutshell.

It is grossly unfair to public employees, teachers being among them.

HR 82 would repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO) that reduce earned Social Security benefits.

A bill like this comes up every year. It always has hundred of sponsors in the House and Senate. Democrats and Republicans.

It never passes.