Senators Feinstein and Collins Introduce Measure to Encourage Private
Sector Employees to Become Teachers, Firefighters
February 13, 2003
Washington,
DC
-- U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Susan Collins (R-ME)
today introduced legislation to provide incentives for private sector
employees to become teachers, firefighters, police officers, or other
government employees. The measure would repeal provisions of current law
that reduce Social Security benefits for retirees who paid into Social
Security and also receive a government pension.
"Under current law, public employees, whose salaries are often lower than
those in the private sector to begin with, find that they are penalized
and held to a different standard when it comes to retirement benefits,"
Senator Feinstein said. "The unfair reduction in their benefits
makes it more difficult to recruit teachers, police officers, and fire
fighters. In certain cases, their wives and husbands will lose spousal
benefits, too."
"In my view, this is simply unfair -- especially at a time when we need
to be doing all we can to attract qualified people government service.
This legislation would repeal these provisions so that government employees
won't be unfairly penalized for their public service."
The legislation
repeals two provisions in the current Social Security Act that create
this problem: The Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension
Offset provision.
- The Windfall Elimination Provision reduces Social Security benefits for retirees who paid into Social Security and also receive a government pension, such as from a teacher retirement fund. Private sector retirees receive monthly Social Security checks equal to 90 percent of their first $561 in average monthly career earnings, plus 32 percent of monthly earnings up to $3,381 and 15 percent of earnings above $3,381. Government pensioners, however, are only allowed to receive 40 percent of the first $561 in career monthly earnings -- a penalty of $280.50 per month.
- The current Government Pension Offset provision reduces Social Security spousal benefits by an amount equal to two-thirds of the spouse's public employment civil service pension. This can have the effect of taking away, entirely, a spouse's benefits from Social Security.
This legislation was introduced in the 107th Congress.
###