Action Alert # 115 How Are You Doing?
With all the current dislocations, the illnesses and the deaths, it is harder to stand up and complain about the GPO/WEP. This is especially difficult when we know others who may have been hit with worse outcomes and have lost more of their income to our closed society than we have with the Social Security offsets.
The truth is that, in addition to dealing with being among the high risk group for the worst outcomes from COVID-19, many retirees have also lost income from part time jobs or businesses that made retirement work for us. Those of us who have rented out rooms in our homes in order to keep up with the cost of living in those homes, have lost rental income because of the closures of schools and businesses.
The Social Security benefits that would have helped cushion these blows, aren’t there for us.
So we demand, again: Repeal the punitive Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision!
Something to look out for:
There has been talk of alleviating the burden on workers and businesses by eliminating the percentage of salary that a worker and an employer pay into FICA—the Social Security funding mechanism. Adding less money to the Social Security general fund would WEAKEN our chances for repealing the offsets since it would cut back, even slightly, Social Security’s financial situation. During the big financial crisis ten years ago, contributions to the Social Security fund were also cut back, but then the Social Security account was replenished by the Federal Treasury funds. Any cuts to FICA payments must include back-filling by the Federal Treasury!
The repeal bill in the House, H.R. 141, currently has 245 co-signers, a quarter of them Republicans. We need to add more supporters to make sure that it seems a safe win for House leadership to bring this bill to the floor. This is a bi-partisan bill! Is your representative on this list?
Here is a link to the bill and the names of those who are on our side: H.R.141 – Social Security Fairness Act of 2019
Call your Representative and tell them how the COVID-19 crisis has added to the penalties of the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision. Let them now how this is affecting you! If they are thinking about doing something to make sure Social Security works better, the first thing to do is to REPEAL THE GPO AND WEP!