My first snow in Brooklyn and the Senate passes Social Security fairness.
I got my first snowfall over night since moving from Chicago to Brooklyn.
By the time I walked down to the corner bagel shop to get breakfast most of what fell on the sidewalks and streets had melted.
But it was pretty, and since I now live in an apartment, I don’t have to shovel it.
A win-win.
I was up late last night waiting for the news that the Senate had passed the Social Security Fairness Act.
It was expected to pass, since the Senate had already approved it earlier in the week in a procedural vote.
The Senate voted early Saturday morning to repeal the two laws that prevent many public employees from receiving Social Security.
The vote was 76-20.
The Windfall Elimination Act, enacted in 1983, adjusts how much in Social Security benefits a public worker can get if they receive a pension, while the Government Pension Offset, enacted in 1977, affects the Social Security benefits a spouse or widow who receives pensions would get.
The change benefits public-sector workers such as teachers, police officers, firefighters.
As of November 2024, more than two million Americans had their Social Security benefits reduced by the WEP. More than 650,000 people were affected by the GPO.
On a personal level, as a Illinois public school teacher who worked in the private sector for 20 years before a career change in 1984, I lost two-thirds of my Social Security benefits along with any spousal death benefits in order to teach.
The Social Security Fairness Act was approved earlier in November by the House of Representatives on a bipartisan vote of 327-75.
Following Senate approval, it now goes to President Biden for signing.
An interesting question to ponder is why, with doom-and-gloom predictions that Social Security will go bottom up in nine years, did it pass at this moment?
We’ve been organizing for the change for over a decade with nothing happening.
Congressional Tea Party budget hawks argued against the repeal.
But Trump and Vance supported the bill.
The issue has been long simmering in Washington.
The bill would often get a majority of congressional co-sponsors but then never get brought to the floor for a vote.
Eliminating the WEP would boost monthly payments to the affected beneficiaries by an average of $360 by December 2025, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Meanwhile, scrapping the GPO would increase monthly benefits by an average of $700 for recipients getting benefits based on living spouses, or an average of $1,190 for those surviving spouses getting a widow or widower benefit, the CBO estimated.
And does it seem odd that just at the time that President Musk is calling for Social Security cuts and even Social Security elimination, that Republicans would vote for Social Security expansion?
As John Prine said, “It’s a big old goofy world.”
I guess we will see.