North Carolina Alliance for Retired Americans

Retirees from across the country today submitted tens of thousands of petition signatures to 36 key senators and members of Congress urging them to pass S. 1302 and H.R. 82, the Social Security Fairness Act.



These provisions reduce Social Security benefits for public sector retirees who receive a public pension or the spouse or survivor of a Social Security beneficiary who worked for a period of time in a job not covered by the Social Security program.



The legislation would repeal the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and allow 2.5 million retired public employees and spouses and survivors who have a public pension and are entitled to their spouses’ Social Security benefits to receive the full Social Security benefits that they otherwise earned.



“For more than 38 years, millions of federal, state and local workers, and the spouses or survivors who have a public pension and are entitled to their spouses’ Social Security, have been denied part of the Social Security wages they have earned, simply because they worked in jobs that offered traditional pensions,” said Bette Marafino, a leader of the National WEP and GPO Task Force from West Hartford, Connecticut. “Congress should be working to strengthen retirement security for all, and that includes repealing unfair laws that deny millions the retirement benefits they have earned.”