On April 2\u00a0more than 40 members of the California Retired Teachers Association arrived in Washington DC<\/b>\u00a0to speak to the policy makers (Legislative Aides) while their bosses were on Easter recess.\u00a0 It involved lots of early planning as well as organizing the debriefings and writing thank you letters to the legislators. We thank CalRTA for the hard work they did to organize this!\u00a0 It proved to be a good time to be there.<\/p>\n
Every one of the 53 CA Congressional Offices was visited<\/b>, nearly all of them with formal appointments on April 3. \u00a0In addition, on April 4th\u00a0and 5th, three members of Social Security Fairness went to an additional six members of the Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee and left information. We left information at another 22 offices of the members of the Senate Finance Committee (the Ways and Means counterpart in the Senate) and a few others.\u00a0 Some of these visits were requested by our members, and the list of Senators we visited is at the bottom of this Alert.\u00a0 Also, attached, is the 4-page packet we left in the offices.<\/p>\n
A number of offices also were given hand-signed petitions for repeal from the Congress Person\u2019s own constituents.\u00a0 The online \u201cpetition\u201d that is on our website is actually a method of sending emails directly to legislators and were sent when you signed that form. (Nearly 15,700 letters sent so far!)\u00a0 While leaving the packets we were able to talk to aides in 7 different Senate offices, finding some for the repeal and some against it.<\/p>\n
Useful things we learned:<\/b><\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 There are some strong forces, including NEA, working out a plan to re-introduce the repeal bills.\u00a0 Timing is important as are the details.\u00a0 We hope to see some new bills soon.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0 The worst thing we heard is that the cost to get rid of the offsets is the same as will be \u201csaved\u201d by instituting the Chained CPI.\u00a0 Neither will make much of a difference in the big picture. (less than 2% of annual payments)<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0\u00a0 The most useful thing we heard was that many staff members, even those with years of experience on \u201cThe Hill,\u201d do not understand how the offsets actually affect people.\u00a0 Our job is to fix that.<\/p>\n
SUPPORT ACTION REQUESTED NOW:<\/b><\/p>\n
Prepare your best letter and use it over and over.\u00a0<\/b>Mention\u00a0the hardship\u00a0that the Offsets have caused you, specifically, using dollar amounts if you wish, and also show them why much of the thought process behind the GPO\/WEP is faulty.\u00a0\u00a0Write to the person in your Representative or Senator\u2019s office who is in charge of Social Security questions, when possible. \u00a0When explaining the faulty reasoning behind the GPO\/WEP you may find a complete list of ideas in the attachment or select from the list below.<\/p>\n
We recommend using these points when writing your Senator or Representative’s office.<\/b><\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 You were never told before you retired,\u00a0<\/b>either by your employer or by the SSA, that the statements you got for years were not representing the amount of money you would get as a benefit. (The law to inform employees did not affect anyone hired before Jan. 1, 2005)<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0 Although there have been some public employment situations where employees have had the choice to contribute to Social Security as well as their public pension,\u00a0you had no choice<\/b>\u00a0whether or not to pay into Social Security.<\/b>\u00a0(Many people in Washington know that Federal employees in the 1980\u2019s could choose to stay in their current retirement system and not pay into SS or join FERS and pay into both the Federal Employee Retirement System and Social Security, earning both pensions.<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0The amount you lose to the WEP makes no sense\u00a0<\/b>based on your public pension amount and work history. (Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas has developed a formula that is more accurate, but it is also very complex.)\u00a0 People who have studied this issue know that it is wrong.\u00a0 It is based on a guess, rather than recent hard data.<\/p>\n
4.<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The GPO was not meant to cause dependants to lose ALL<\/b>\u00a0of their earned spousal or survivor benefits.\u00a0 Changes in wages in the past 30 years have distorted the formula\u2014a short career negates many years of dependency. \u00a0If you do get your own SS benefits they will be reduced each year by 2\/3 of any cost of living increase in your public pension.<\/p>\n
5. \u00a0Both Offsets have an unequal effect on women, and exacerbate the male\/female wage gap.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>Of the nearly 568,000 penalized by the GPO, 80% are women and, of those, 74% lose their entire Social Security benefit.\u00a0In addition, women often have lower level wages and a shorter work career, which gives them a smaller Social Security retirement benefit based on their own work, and then that benefit is also cut by the WEP.\u00a0This is a case of double jeopardy!<\/p>\n
6.\u00a0WEP<\/b>\u00a0fails to consider that some\u00a0workers\u00a0have earned\u00a0only Social Security and no additional pension for part of their career.\u00a0<\/b>\u00a0Some employers provide no pension system and\u00a0some pensions\u00a0require a specific number of years before becoming vested. Therefore, because people change employers, lose their jobs before pensions are vested, or work for employers with no pension system, many people\u00a0receive\u00a0no separate pension contributions other than Social Security from their employers. Even though these\u00a0workers\u00a0may eventually qualify for a public pension in addition to Social Security, they will be deprived of some of\u00a0the only retirement benefits\u00a0they\u00a0received for many of their working years. Their\u00a0Social Security,\u00a0and their retirement income will be\u00a0calculated on a\u00a0partial lifetime of work, rather than their\u00a0full lifetime of work, thereby substantially reducing their future standard of living.<\/p>\n
House Ways and Means members offices visited:<\/b><\/p>\n
Doggett TX, Griffin AR, Sam Johnson TX, Kelly PA, Schwartz PA, Schock IL<\/p>\n
Senate offices visited:\u00a0 (*offices where we spoke to policy aides)<\/b><\/p>\n
Begich*, Bennett, Boxer*, Brown, Carper, Cornyn, Feinstein*, Graham, Cantwell, Enzi, Hatch*, McCaskill, Mikulski, Murkowski, Rockefeller, Nelson, Portman*, Rubio*, Stabenow, Toomey, Warren*, Whitehouse.<\/p>\n
We have received support from retirees in nearly every state in the Union. Thanks to all of you who have been acting on the Alerts and who have continued to bring this issue to the attention of Congress in a positive manner.\u00a0 As we join together to fight for repeal we would like to clarify that unless people have given permission, it is not our policy to share private emails<\/b>.\u00a0<\/b>This is a long, hard battle and we respect everyone who has tried to right this wrong from whatever position they are in, including both elected and association officials.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On April 2\u00a0more than 40 members of the California Retired Teachers Association arrived in Washington DC\u00a0to speak to the policy makers (Legislative Aides) while their bosses were on Easter recess.\u00a0 It involved lots of early planning as well as organizing the debriefings and writing thank you letters to the legislators. We thank CalRTA for the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":3,"label":"Action Alerts"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"SS Fairness","author_link":"https:\/\/ssfairness.org\/author\/ssfairness\/"},"comment_info":"","category_info":[{"term_id":3,"name":"Action Alerts","slug":"action-alerts","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":126,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":126,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Action Alerts","category_nicename":"action-alerts","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssfairness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssfairness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssfairness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssfairness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssfairness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ssfairness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssfairness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssfairness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssfairness.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}