Alert: Tell Them This Week–It’s Time for a Hearing!

Please call your Representative and Demand a Ways and Means Committee Hearing.

Despite the fact that there are now 298 co-signers on H.R.82, the bill to fully repeal the WEP and GPO, and there were even more co-signers in the last Congress, there has never been a full hearing on the offsets and how they work. Many legislators are still in the dark. 

We need to back up our Congressional co-sponsors, Garret Graves and Abigail Spanberger by telling our own Members of Congress to demand a full hearing on the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset. 

Find their websites at house.gov and email or call their offices by Friday. (We hope you already have their phone numbers, local and D.C., in your address book.) Call them this week!

Whether your representative has signed on or not, give them a couple of reasons to demand a real hearing to answer some questions:

• Why does the GPO ignore the years a spouse may be totally dependent and earning benefits before going to work and earning a public pension?
• Why do some people say that the WEP formula was written incorrectly?
• Why do public pensions cause the offsets when other forms of income are not affected?
• How can Social Security justify cutting people’s benefits when they retire without informing them beforehand?
• How do they defend the fact that the offsets cause a greater hardship on lower-income people than for those who have larger pensions?
• Add your own questions!

There are questions to be answered.  Ask your legislator, co-signer or not, to request a hearing!