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On Sunday, President Biden signed the Social Security Fairness Act into law, a bill which looks to make the distribution of Social Security funds more equitable. The bill passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support in November and made it through the Senate last month by a vote of 76-20.
Specifically, the Social Security Fairness Act will repeal two statutes — the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and the Government Pension Offset (GPO) — that reduce payouts to individuals who receive government pensions not covered by Social Security. Those individuals include state and local police, firefighters, teachers, bus drivers, and other public sector workers and their spouses.
Following the bill’s passage into law, the North Alabama Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO released an official statement celebrating the new policy.
“This bipartisan bill will ensure that over 2.5 million Americans who paid into Social Security, but because of their public service were not eligible for benefits, will now be able to enjoy a secure retirement. For more than 40 years, dedicated teachers, firefighters, postal workers, and so many other public sector workers have been shortchanged in their golden years, but now these cornerstones of our communities will get the income and dignity they deserve,” reads the NAALC press release.
“A long fight for Social Security justice has been rewarded,” added Gerald Leonard, Political Coordinator for the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 462 in Huntsville, “what public servants put in, they should be able to get in return.”
The union leadership also criticized Alabama’s U.S. Senators Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville, who both voted against the bill’s passage in the Senate.
“…this national win comes with absolutely no thanks to Senators Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville. It is beyond disgraceful Alabama’s Senators chose to vote no on a bill that would help retirees keep their lights on,” the NAALC stated. “Both Britt and Tuberville should be ashamed to show their faces in any union hall or American Legion post for the rest of their lives for trying to undermine this bill while being paid on our tax dollars.”
“Tuberville in particular should be embarrassed, considering his annual pension from his time as a public employee at Auburn is higher than the median salary of people who work in our state. This on top of his lucrative $5.1 million dollar contract buy-out – when most working Alabamians are fired, they don’t get golden parachutes like that,” the statement continued. “It is a gross miscarriage of justice that Senator Tuberville receives a generous socialized retirement benefit, yet refuses to support a basic standard of living for other retirees.”
“As Tuberville rakes in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from public funds through his salary and his pension, he told retired Alabamians who spent their lives serving the public that he thought they make too much money,” added NAALC President Jacob Morrison, “working Alabamians deserve better than that.”
Sen. Katie Britt had previously released a statement explaining why she voted against the Social Security Act in December.
“The WEP and GPO are flawed, but the ‘Social Security Fairness Act’ is far from fair, nor is it accurate or fiscally responsible,” Britt said last month.
“I voted against this roughly $200 billion bill because it would accelerate the insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund and provide Social Security benefits that were not paid for by the beneficiaries. I was disappointed Senator Cruz’s amendment failed, which would have helped fix WEP in a fairer manner,” she continued. “It is crucial we meet our obligations to the hardworking families and retirees who have paid into Social Security for generations to come.”
Britt’s comments referenced a proposed amendment to the bill which Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, had put forward in December. Cruz’s amendment would have increased monthly payments for those affected by WEP by $100 to $150 every month and would have based future retirees’ earnings off of their individual earnings over their entire career with a proportionate benefit based on what they paid into Social Security. Both Britt and Tuberville voted in favor of Cruz’s amendment, but it ultimately failed to pass.
