The progressive nature of the Social Security formula treats a Boston police officer like a person just above the poverty level (looking only at this FICA wages) and truly gives him a "windfall." The WEP dealt with that, but it is gone as of Sunday. But the worst misstatement of any, repeated recently by a union leader, is that the worst impact was on the spouses of public retirees. Not true. Nothing in either provision hurt a spouse. The only person whose SS benefits could be impacted by a non-covered pension was the employee.
Thank you for this! I have been arguing with my sister (retired teacher) who thinks WEP was “unfair”. I told her maybe she should ask people who didn’t get pensions and had to rely only on SS if they thought it was fair. This is such a costly bill when SS is already in the hole.
The progressive nature of the Social Security formula treats a Boston police officer like a person just above the poverty level (looking only at this FICA wages) and truly gives him a "windfall." The WEP dealt with that, but it is gone as of Sunday. But the worst misstatement of any, repeated recently by a union leader, is that the worst impact was on the spouses of public retirees. Not true. Nothing in either provision hurt a spouse. The only person whose SS benefits could be impacted by a non-covered pension was the employee.
Thank you for this! I have been arguing with my sister (retired teacher) who thinks WEP was “unfair”. I told her maybe she should ask people who didn’t get pensions and had to rely only on SS if they thought it was fair. This is such a costly bill when SS is already in the hole.
Alas, it's moot.
EXCEPT
Maybe we can get them to agree -- if they're going to get those benefits, they should be paying for them.....