NEA reacts to House’s passage of bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act

WASHINGTON-The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the Social Security Fairness Act (H.R. 82), which would repeal the Windfall Elimination Provisionand the Government Pension Offset laws that reduce or even eliminate Social Security benefits for millions of public service workers. The National Education Association has been a leading advocate working to repeal these unfair and punitive laws.

The following statement can be attributed to NEA President Becky Pringle:

"Educators dedicate their lives to public service, but when it is time to retire, far too many find that they have been stripped of the Social Security and retirement benefits they earned due to an unjust and morally wrong penalty. Not only do the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) exclusively punish educators, firefighters, and police officers, but these laws discourage people from pursuing public service careers. Tonight, the House took a historic step in repealing these punitive and discriminatory laws.

"The House's passage of the bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act is a major milestoneand a huge victory brought forth by the tireless advocacy of educators and other public servants. Repealing GPO-WEP has been a decades-long priority for the National Education Association, and on behalf of our 3 million members, we thank Reps. Spanberger and Graves for their leadership on this issue. We urge the Senate to act with urgency and pass this bill as soon as possible so that we can finally help eliminate this unfair penalty on retirement benefits. Record levels of Americans are demanding a change to these archaic and punitive laws. The time to act is now because everyone should be able to retire with dignity and receive the benefits they earned through a lifetime of public service."