The Senate enacted legislation last week that could provide higher Social Security payouts to hundreds of thousands of Californians.
Teachers, firefighters, state, county, municipal, and district personnel may be eligible for assistance. They are persons who paid into the Social Security system while working in qualified jobs, but their benefits were reduced due to federal laws because they also worked for the government.
The bill was decisively approved by the House last month. The bill received support from California Democrats Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff.
The proposal would “ensure that no American who has contributed to Social Security is wrongfully denied their well-earned benefits,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., stated as the Senate began discussing the bill this week.
The independent Congressional Research Service projected that the Act will affect around 290,000 California public employees, the majority of whom are retired.
According to CRS, the law might benefit approximately 102,000 California spouses as well. A total of 6.3 Californians get Social Security benefits.
There is no estimate for the average benefit or when it would be available.
The Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset will be repealed.
The Windfall Elimination Provision decreases Social Security benefits for those who have earned benefits but also get a state pension from work that Social Security does not cover.
Someone who works as a teacher but also works as a counselor at a private camp over the summer may have their benefits reduced. Under the plan, they would receive their entire Social Security income.
The Government Pension Offset reduces benefits awarded to surviving spouses receiving a government pension, even if their husband or wife paid into the system.
The revisions are a “bipartisan victory for public sector employees and their families, who, like all Americans, deserve to collect the benefits they have earned,” said Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Commission to Protect Social Security and Medicare, an activist organization.
Despite the overwhelming congressional support, there is widespread fear that the measure may harm Social Security’s already precarious economic picture.
Earlier this year, the program’s trustees assessed that if the expanded benefits were not enacted, the program would become insolvent in 2035.
If nothing is done to aid Social Security, claimants will only receive roughly 83% of their pension.
Critics were disturbed by the increased spending. “We are racing towards our own fiscal demise,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a watchdog organization.
The new benefit, she argued, “does nothing to address the windfalls they are intended to eliminate; instead, it simply restores windfalls for folks who have other government pensions.” “What an unbelievable series of events.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) concurred. “A lot of people may think I am committing political suicide by doing this,” he stated as he rejected the bill. Tillis will seek re-election in 2026.
But, prior to voting, he stated: “We are about to pass an unfunded $200 billion spending package for a trust fund that is likely to go insolvent over the next nine to 10 years, and we are going to pretend like somebody else has to fix it.”