community sector workers are on tenterhooks, hoping sometime in the next six weeks the Senate will pass a invoice to allow them to receive Social safety benefits they feel they’re entitled to.

Last week, a bipartisan majority of the U.S. House passed the Social safety Fairness Act to eliminate the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government retirement fund Offset (GPO), which reduce Social safety benefits for sure retirees who also receive retirement fund turnover. The invoice now awaits a Senate vote for a chance to become law, but only has until Dec. 31 before it dies.

Together, WEP and GPO affect nearly three million Americans including police officers, firefighters, postal workers and community-school teachers.

“Billions of dollars have been withheld from community workers who earned both a community retirement fund and Social safety benefits for the history 50 years,” said Rafael Sanchez, who worked for the state of California for 30 years before moving to Idaho to work in the private sector and pay into Social safety for three years.

How do WEP and GPO affect Social safety benefits?

• The Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) reduces Social safety for those who receive so-called “non-covered” retirement fund turnover from jobs, typically community sector roles, that didn’t contribute Social safety payroll taxes. The reduction can be significant – up to half the retirement fund amount.
• The Government retirement fund Offset (GPO) reduces survivor or spousal benefits if a person’s retirement fund is non-covered. GPO affects fewer people, but it cuts the Social safety advantage by two-thirds of the retirement fund amount. If two-thirds of your government retirement fund is more than your Social safety advantage, your advantage could be reduced to zero.

The rules were intended to prevent Social safety from overpaying people who worked in non-covered retirement fund jobs, policy experts said. People with profits outside the Social safety structure can look like low earners.

Since Social safety replaces a higher percentage of prior profits for low-paid workers than for higher-paid workers, those who received well government salaries for decades would receive the same advantage in Social safety calculations as longtime low-turnover workers, proponents of the rules argued.

Are WEP and GPO unfair?

The provisions unfairly penalize people for having worked community sector jobs, some critics declare.

Sara Fischer, 65, took an early retirement fund purchase at the age of 44 from her job of 25 years with the federal courts. Since that was 11 years younger than the minimum retirement fund age, she knew she wouldn’t receive her packed retirement fund and was okay with that. Fischer said she knew she’d eventually get another job in the private sector, pay into Social safety and receive a monthly advantage based on what she paid from her paychecks.

She was incorrect. Her monthly Social safety check will be docked about $600 because of WEP, she said.

“I don’t expect Social safety to pay me any more than what anyone who worked for 11 years would receive based on what I earned and what I paid into Social safety,” said Fischer, who still works part-period as a paralegal in Detroit, Michigan.

However, she added, “what WEP says to people like me is …we don’t worry how much you paid into Social safety and what you’re entitled to, based on what you paid in during the years you contributed to Social safety. We are going to slash your Social safety check because you were a government employee. Period. That is the only rationale.”

What’s worse, once your Social safety advantage is slashed, you’re also losing out on the annual expense-of-living adjustment (COLA), said invoice Callahan, 67, a retired educator in Middlebury, Connecticut.

“Our COLA is determined after the deduction for either the GPO or WEP…which means we misplace out each year,” he said.

Instead of applying COLA to the roughly $839 Social safety advantage Callahan would have received without WEP, he said his COLA is based on the amount after his $480 WEP deduction.  In 2025, he’ll receive a 2.5% boost on $359, or just less than $9 a month.

That’s less than half the $21 he would have received if COLA was applied to the advantage before WEP, and the $10.30 boost, to $185.00, in the standard monthly extra charge for Medicare Part B in 2025, up from $174.70 in 2024. 

“You receive this and play it out over 20 years of COLA, and it stinks,” he said.

Can we afford to eliminate WEP and GPO?

The Social safety Fairness Act would expense $196 billion over the next decade, hasten Social safety’s insolvency by about six months and boost the automatic advantage cuts when they occur, said the bipartisan nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal apportionment (CRFB).

“These provisions aren’t perfect, and there are lots of ideas to reform them,” said CRFB President Maya MacGuineas in a statement. “But repealing them altogether would shift in exactly the incorrect path.”

The Center on apportionment and Policy Priorities, considered to be center-left, suggested a proportional formula that would compute Social safety benefits based on turnover earned from jobs that paid into Social safety and not accelerate insolvency.

For example, if 75% of a person’s profits comes from these jobs, then the person would receive Social safety equal to 75% of what they would have gotten if all their profits had arrive from those positions.

Will the Senate pass the Social safety Fairness Act?

Senate Majority chief Chuck Schumer hasn’t yet brought the Act to a vote and only has until yearend to do so, said The Seniors Citizens League, a nonpartisan seniors throng. Otherwise, the invoice dies and lawmakers must commence over with a recent invoice.

USA Today reached out to Schumer to view if he planned to bring the invoice to a vote and hadn’t heard back by period of publication.

The invoice has 62 bipartisan Senate sponsors, more than the 60 votes needed to complete a filibuster and pass the legislation.

“They have the votes in their pocket,” Callahan said. “This better not be about politics. It’s about fairness.”

Medora Lee is a money, markets, and financial planning reporter at USA TODAY. You can reach her at [email protected] andsubscribe to our free Daily Money newsletter for financial planning tips and business information every Monday through Friday morning.