A bill is expected to arrive on the floor of the US House of Representatives this fall which would increase benefits for individuals with earnings that weren’t subject to Social Security taxation and end up costing taxpayers an additional $196 billion over ten years. The bill would repeal Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO).

The proposal is controversial, as some Congressmen believe WEP and GPO would unfairly benefit public sector workers at a high cost to taxpayers. WEP adjusts Social Security benefits for workers who have pensions from working for state or local governments and who also qualify for Social Security but with a limited earnings record. The GPO makes similar adjustments for spouses and survivors who worked in jobs that were not subject to Social Security’s taxes.

Congress adopted these adjustments to preserve the intent behind Social Security’s progressive benefit formula, which replaces a higher percentage of preretirement wages for lower-income workers than for higher earners, and to duplicate the dual-entitlement rule that prevents workers from collecting more than one benefit at a time. Before the windfall elimination provision and government pension offset were implemented, certain workers and spouses would receive an unfair “windfall” in the form of higher benefits than Congress intended.

The current approach treats some beneficiaries better than others. When these rules were enacted in 1983, Social Security lacked the necessary data to make appropriate adjustments.

The Social Security Fairness Act of 2023 (H.R.82) would repeal both rules, giving public sector workers unfairly high benefits by treating them as if they had been low-income workers