Before leaving Washington, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown restores retirement benefits for public workers

By: Nick Evans – Ohio Capital Journal

On his way out of town, Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown was able to notch one final long-sought legislative victory that will benefit public sector workers in Ohio and around the country. The Social Security Fairness Act ensures former government workers like police, firefighters and teachers can collect their full retirement benefits by repealing two provisions that reduce social security payouts.

Many public sector workers aren’t covered by Social Security because their employer runs a pension program for their retirement. But eventually, a lot of those workers move on to other jobs that do pay into the Social Security system. Even though many of them end up working the requisite 40 quarters to be fully eligible for Social Security benefits, the program reduces their payouts because they’re also collecting retirement benefits from their other pension program.

William Johnson, who heads up the National Association of Police Organizations explained, “Most police officers must retire after specific time served, usually in their early to mid-fifties, (but) many look for new opportunities to serve their community.”

Those workers are penalized by what’s known as the Windfall Elimination Provision, he explained.

“Instead of receiving full support from their rightfully earned Social Security retirement benefit, their pension heavily offsets it, thus vastly reducing the amount they receive,” Johnson said.

Surviving spouses can come off even worse though. The Government Pension Offset requires reductions in Social Security dependent benefits if one spouse receives benefits from a public pension. Johnson argued that offset often results in “eliminating most or all of the payment.”

Those provision were approved by lawmakers in the 1970s and 80s in a bid to keep the program solvent.

In all, Brown’s office said, the reductions affect 3 million Americans including almost a quarter million Ohioans.

How we got here

Following an election in which Republicans criticized Brown’s long service in Washington, passage of the Social Security Fairness Act offers one data point in favor of experience. Brown held a field hearing in Columbus discussing the proposal earlier this year and he’s been working to pass it since serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.

He last served in that chamber 17 years ago.

In a press release following the vote Brown described working for years to eventually cobble together more than 60 cosponsors.

“We have spent decades working to pass this legislation and tonight is a victory for all the public servants who will finally get the Social Security they have earned,” he said. “Tonight, Congress ensured that police officers, firefighters, teachers, and public servants across Ohio will be able to retire with the Social Security they spent their lives paying into.”

Brown’s effort has also been the beneficiary of shifting attitudes in the Republican Party. For many, many years, a core tenet of Republican politics was searching for a way to get Social Security spending under control. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s chief legislative goal was privatizing the program. More recently U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, R-FL, proposed a Rescue America Plan in 2023 that would sunset Social Security and Medicare.

But since the emergence of Donald Trump as the leader of the Republican Party, efforts to overhaul the retirement program have largely taken a back seat. Within weeks of introducing his plan, for instance, Scott backtracked on sunsetting Social Security and Medicare. Last week, he even voted in favor of the Social Security Fairness Act.

It’s not hard to see why. With Trump leading the party there’s no longer a top-down rhetorical push for cutting spending on a popular program. At the same time, traditionally Republican-leaning constituencies like police have a strong case that it’s unfair to limit Social Security benefits they earned simply because they earned other benefits from a different career.

All the same, the measure does nothing to improve the long-term balance sheet for Social Security. The most recent report on the Social Security Trust Fund puts its depletion date at 2033. Meanwhile, although Trump has not proposed cutting retirement benefits he has proposed cutting the taxes that pay for that trust fund—potentially burning through its reserves more quickly.

Reactions

In the moment however, passage of the bill was met with praise from organizations representing public sector workers. National Fraternal Order of Police President Patrick Yoes argued the WEP and GPO are “inherently unfair provisions that unjustly penalize our nation’s public employees.”

“No one, even those who did not vote for our bill today, argued that the provisions treated workers fairly,” he went on. “If this scheme were being run by a pension board or private money management group, instead of the social security administration, they would not call it an elimination of a windfall or an offset — it would be considered embezzlement.”

International Association of Fire Fighters General President Edward Kelly chimed in that “for over 40 years,” firefighters and other public workers have had retirement benefits “stolen” by Congress.

“But today,” he said, “the United States Senate, in a rarely seen bipartisan effort, stood up to say, ‘No more,’ voting to ensure retirees finally get the benefits they paid into and earned.”

Ohio Education Association President Scott DiMauro said, “for too long, the federal government has failed to provide the full Social Security benefits many public school educators earned.”

“For too long,” he added, “potentially great educators have chosen not to enter this profession because they would lose much of the Social Security benefits they had previously earned if they entered a life of public service. That changes now.”

Follow OCJ Reporter Nick Evans on Twitter.

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Nick Evans

Nick Evans has spent the past seven years reporting for NPR member stations in Florida and Ohio. He got his start in Tallahassee, covering issues like redistricting, same sex marriage and medical marijuana. Since arriving in Columbus in 2018, he has covered everything from city council to football. His work on Ohio politics and local policing have been featured numerous times on NPR.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

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