Overlooked Social Security vote an example of Congress' real financial challenges
A mostly ignored vote last week in the U.S. House of Representatives split the Oklahoma delegation and illustrates the difficult decisions ahead for Congress and the American people.
No, this wasn’t about President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet picks or any of the sweeping changes he’s proposing.
It was about Social Security.
By a vote of 327-75, the House passed H.R. 82, the Social Security Fairness Act. Oklahoma members Kevin Hern and Josh Brecheen voted against it; Reps. Tom Cole, Frank Lucas and Stephanie Bice voted for it.
H.R. 82 addresses what almost everyone seems to agree is a long-standing inequity in the Social Security system. If it gets through the Senate before the end of the year and is signed into law, H.R. 82 will mean larger Social Security payments for almost 3 million recipients.
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That’s the easy part for lawmakers.
The hard part is that it will cost $194 billion and likely drain already hemorrhaging Social Security reserves a little bit faster.
H.R. 82 eliminates the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, two mechanisms that reduce Social Security benefits of some recipients and survivors who also receive government pensions. The Government Pension Offset has been in effect since 1977, the Windfall Elimination Provision since 1983.
The two provisions are intended to prevent retirees from “double dipping” on government benefits, and they date from a time when many government retirees had not paid into Social Security for some or all of their careers.
Current retirees argue — persuasively, apparently — that they have paid into the systems and deserve the same benefits as everyone else.
Thus, the decision for lawmakers, including Oklahoma’s, was whether to go on record opposing retirement benefits for retired school teachers and widows of federal employees or for speeding up Social Security’s day of reckoning.
First District Congressman Kevin Hern tried to finesse the matter by issuing a statement about his vote for an alternative to H.R. 82 with a similar-sounding name.
“It’s no secret that the Windfall Elimination Provision needs a fix to ensure fairness without cutting funds from Social Security and further damaging a program that needs urgent attention,” Hern said. “The Equal Treatment of Public Servants Act provides a fair and accurate fix to the WEP. I’ve spoken to many Oklahomans who are impacted by this legislation directly, and I believe this bill is the right step forward on this issue.”
But the Equal Treatment of Public Servants Act — which failed despite yes votes from all five Oklahoma representatives — wouldn’t eliminate either the WEP or the GPO. Instead, it would recalculate the former and leave the latter alone.
It also would be much cheaper to implement.
Social Security is particularly difficult for budget hawks like Hern. They don’t want to be seen as anti-Social Security, but they also believe that circumstances dictate narrowing eligibility, not expanding it.
And agreeing to a $194 billion future obligation while preaching fiscal restraint can be hard to explain.
In this case, the majority of both parties decided the $194 billion is justified as a matter of fairness and that it can be covered by additional revenue or other changes to the system, such as raising the retirement age.
Such decisions are not glamorous, especially when up against the fireworks of the upcoming Trump administration, but they keep the trains running — or, in this case, the Social Security checks going out — as the saying goes.
But with Social Security reserves now projected to run out in nine years and the federal deficit on track to double in about the same time, such decisions are only going to get harder.
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