Hearing Held on WEP, GPO

The House Social Security subcommittee has held a hearing at which it heard from groups representing federal employees and state and local employees whose members are affected by two Social Security benefit reductions that in the federal government mainly affect those under the CSRS retirement system—the government pension offset and the windfall elimination provision. Various bills to reduce or eliminate those reductions are pending in Congress, some of them with substantial numbers of cosponsors, although the same has been true for many years and no bills have advanced in the legislative process. Opponents of the GPO and WEP are hoping that the issues will be addressed as part of a broader Social Security overhaul, although to date the focus on Social Security has been almost exclusively on financing and restructuring proposals, not improvements to current benefits.