The Senate approves a bill to expand Social Security to millions of Americans

Nearly 3 million Americans will receive full Social Security benefits under a law passed in the final hours of the current Congress and now heads to President Biden, who is expected to sign the legislation.

Senators voted 76-20 for the Social Security Fairness Act, which would do that Elimination of two federal policies which prevents nearly three million people, including police officers, firefighters, postal workers, teachers and other public pension recipients, from receiving their full Social Security benefits. The legislation has taken decades to develop, with the Senate holding its first hearings on the guidelines in 2003.

“The Senate is finally correcting a 50-year-old mistake,” announced Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, after senators approved the legislation at 12:15 a.m. Saturday.

Democrats voted unanimously for the measure, while Republicans in the Senate were split, with 20 voting for passage and 20 voting against. Four senators did not vote, including Democrat Adam Schiff of California; Joe Manchin, an independent from West Virginia; and two Republicans — Marco Rubio of Florida and Vice President-elect JD Vance of Ohio.

The passage of Congress got to the point. After securing bipartisan approval in the U.S. House of Representatives in November, Senate approval came around 12:15 p.m. Saturday, shortly before another government retention resolution was passed from shutdown. The votes were senators’ final votes in the 118th Congress before the next Congress is sworn in on January 3.

“Social security is a cornerstone of our middle class. You pay into it for 40 quarters, you earned it, it should be there when you retire,” said Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who lost his seat in the November election several votes to advance the bill. “These workers only demand what they have earned.”

Senators rejected four amendments and a budgetary question that would have derailed the measure given the short window left for passage.

Republicans who opposed the bill largely objected to its costs and noted that the measure would hasten the Social Security Trust Fund’s planned insolvency by about six months, now estimated to be about a decade. Proponents of the bill in the Senate, including Republican Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, argued that while Social Security’s funding gap needs to be addressed, it should not be done at the expense of retirees with public pensions.

When does the Social Security Fairness Act take effect?

After the law is signed, the law’s entry into force, according to the text of the law, includes social security payments for months after December 2023. Nevertheless, calculating the amounts due, let alone retroactive payments, may not be easy or quick.

The new law comes at a time when the Social Security Administration is operating at its lowest staffing levels in more than 50 years, or since 1972, and recently imposed a hiring freeze, a spokesman noted. Congress rejected the White House Budget Office’s request to increase its funding, first in September and again last week, leaving it unchanged.

The law’s passage is “a monumental victory for millions of public workers who have been denied the full benefits they rightfully deserve,” said Shannon Benton, executive director of the Senior Citizens League, which has long advocated for retirees This is achieved by expanding social security benefits. “This legislation finally restores equity to the system and ensures that the hard work of teachers, first responders and countless public employees is truly recognized.”

What is the Social Security Fairness Act?

The Social Security Fairness Act would repeal two federal policies – the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO) – that reduce Social Security payments for nearly 3 million retirees.

This includes those who also receive pensions from state and federal jobs not covered by Social Security, including teachers, police officers and U.S. postal workers. The bill would also eliminate a second provision that reduces Social Security benefits for those workers’ surviving spouses and dependents. The WEP affects approximately 2 million Social Security recipients and the GPO affects nearly 800,000 retirees.

The measure, which passed the House in November, had 62 co-sponsors when it was introduced in the Senate last year. But bipartisan support for the bill weakened in recent days, and some Republican lawmakers expressed doubts about its cost. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the proposed legislation would likely increase the federal deficit by $195 billion over a decade.

Vice President-elect JD Vance of Ohio was among 24 Republican senators who joined 49 Democrats in supporting the measure in a first procedural vote Wednesday.

Without Senate approval, the bill’s fate would have ended with the current session of Congress and would have had to be reintroduced in the next Congress.