A bipartisan pair of lawmakers on Tuesday filed a discharge petition seeking to force a vote on the House floor on a measure that would eliminate a pair of controversial tax rules that reduce the retirement benefits of some ex-government workers.
Reps. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Garret Graves, R-La., are the lead sponsors of the Social Security Fairness Act (H.R. 82), a measure introduced last year that would eliminate Social Security’s windfall elimination provision and government pension offset.
The windfall elimination provision reduces the Social Security benefits of retried employees who spent a portion of their careers in the private sector in addition to a federal, state or local government post where Social Security is not intended as an element of their retirement income, like the federal government’s Civil Service Retirement System. And the government pension offset reduces spousal and survivor Social Security benefits in families with retired government workers.
The windfall elimination provision reportedly affects the Social Security benefits of roughly 2 million former public servants, while the GPO impacts nearly 800,000 retirees
