SSA: It could take more than a year to implement the WEP and GPO repeal

Officials at the Social Security Administration said it could take more than a year for the agency to fully implement recently enacted legislation repealing two controversial tax provisions that reduced the retirement benefits of federal workers.

That’s because although lawmakers in both parties voted overwhelmingly to send the Social Security Fairness Act, a bill repealing Social Security’s windfall elimination provision and government pension offset to then-President Biden’s desk last year, they didn’t provide the agency with any extra money to help effectuate the changes.

The windfall elimination provision reduced the Social Security benefits of retired federal workers and other public servants who spent a portion of their career in the private sector in addition to a federal, state or local government job where Social Security was not intended as an element of their retirement income, such as the Civil Service Retirement System. And the government pension offset reduces spousal and survivor Social Security benefits in families with retired government workers.

The Social Security Fairness Act repealed both provisions, retroactive to January 2024. The WEP affects more than 2 million retired public servants, while 750,000 spouses and survivors are affected by the GPO, with many beneficiaries seeing the entire benefit eclipsed by the offset.

In a post on its website last week, the Social Security Administration warned that with its current funding levels, it could take the agency at least a year to adjust the benefits of everyone due an increase, as well as provide lump sum payments covering what they would have received in 2024 absent the provisions. The agency is currently experiencing a 50-year staffing low, while operating under a continuing resolution had already severely restricted hiring until the Trump administration issued a temporary hiring freeze for most federal agencies last week.

“Processing these changes is very complex and SSA’s analysis shows that much of the work must be done manually, on an individual case-by-case basis,” the agency wrote. “SSA is currently processing pending or new claims involving future benefits and developing procedures and automated solutions for computing retroactive benefits . . . Though SSA is helping some affected beneficiaries now, under SSA’s current budget, SSA expects that it could take more than one year to adjust benefits and pay all retroactive benefits.”

Since in many cases the government pension offset fully negated spouses’ survivor benefits, the agency advised people file an application for survivors’ benefits if they hadn’t already, and if they had at some point in the past, to review their mailing address and direct deposit information on file with SSA.

“Because the GPO could reduce or eliminate Social Security spouses’ or surviving spouses’ benefits, some non-covered pension recipients may have never applied for benefits,” SSA wrote. “[Filing] sooner might help you get a higher benefit amount.”