Action Alert #87 – Line Up Your Friends and Family!

There are three more weeks before Congress recesses for full-time campaigning before the election. Before they consider any changes in Social Security, they NEED to get rid of the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision. How do we make more noise about this? There are 4,130 people receiving this email, and we have families and friends. Our children, particularly, should be concerned about how much money we are getting from our investment in Social Security. Time to pull in your cards! With all the election noise, they may be “up to here” with politics, but this is a really specific request: call or write their Member of Congress and tell them to Repeal the GPO and the WEP!

Some of you have requested cut and paste statements. Your own is always the best, but here is a message you and your supporters can use:

My Mother (aunt, elderly friend, etc.) has been badly harmed by not receiving all of her (his) Social Security retirement benefits. She (He) is one of more than 2 million Americans who are not able to collect part or, often, ANY of their benefits because of the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision. For 30 years, these two written laws have affected workers who have earned their Social Security retirement benefits and have also earned even a partial pension from a governmental agency which did not participate in Social Security. They don’t get what they paid for! During their lives FICA taxes were paid for them for other work or for spousal dependency, but their benefits are cut and often totally eliminated. These substantial losses penalize even low-income and part time government employees. No one else is means-tested in this manner. Many widows lose ALL survivor benefits.

Until January 1, 2005, Congress never required that these workers be notified about these unexpected and illogical losses. Trusting the incorrect annual income predicted on the yearly Social Security Administration benefit statements has caused huge extra hardships for retiring teachers, city and county workers, postal employees and police and fire fighters all over this country. This is not the way to attract the quality public servants we need!

The time is now! We must Repeal the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision (H.R. 973 and S. 1651). In addition, this year, support H.R. 711 (Brady) as a step in the right direction.

Despite your possible discomfort in discussing with others how you have been hurt, please get your friends and family onto our team now. THANK YOU!